Fireaxe

"Force your will upon the world and enslave us to your dream." - Fireaxe "River of Madness"

We are all told to follow our dreams, strive to satisfy ourdesires, and fight hard to keep what is ours, but what happens whenachieving those goals is unrealistic or simply impossible? Few of uslike to admit defeat or part with our highest aspirations and so whenour dreams come into conflict with reality it is often reality, or ourperception of it, which is altered to accommodate the dream. Wetry to imagine a reality in which our dreams come true and thus,truth is often the first casualty of desire. Take, for example, our civic responsibilities. We all wantthe things that the government provides for us, police protection,good schools, better roads, and assistance for the unfortunate, and wewant to see these things improved and better funded. But whenevernew taxes are proposed to pay for those improvements we flatly refuseto pay and vote them down. Do we think that the money will comeout of thin air? Of course not. We want everyone else to pay more,believing, generally without any factual support, that we're payingenough, or too much, and others aren't. We don't bother examiningthe issue since we might find out that we are wrong, and when we dostumble upon facts, we accept them selectively, based on what it isthat we want to believe. The end result that we collectively want morethan we are willing to pay for and we all live in our own little worldswith our own ideas of what government needs to do to fix the problem.And so even in a crisis, which inevitably results, there is little consensus,and any way that we end up settling things appears unjust to many ofus, ensuring future conflict and dissent. In this example it is easy to see that we are collectively actingin a way which makes things harder for ourselves. That much is simple.Figuring out a system for calculating each individual's tax burdenfairly is not simple, and getting everyone to agree that the system isjust is virtually impossible. The basic problem is that we all feelentitled to more than we can collectively have, an attitude that extendsto far more than just taxation and civic improvements. It is a simpletruth that we cannot all be above average although we can all want tobe. And though while a few of us actually make our wildest dreamscome true, the vast majority of people who dream of winning a SuperBowl, getting elected president, or becoming a big rock star have thosedreams dashed sooner or later. But since dreams don't die easily, thedemand for special things far outweighs the supply, guaranteeingconflict, and not always in the form of healthy competition. Collectively we invite trouble by chasing dreams and shootingfor the stars, but individually it is the best way for us to achieve thosegoals. The more you want something, the more motivated you will beto achieve it, and the more likely you will push yourself to become thebest that you can possibly be. As individuals it is better for us to loseour larger perspective, pushing aside the possibility that we could loseand ignoring the plight of those who inevitably will. We benefit fromfocusing solely on achieving our personal goals for holding back inany way results in losing ground to those who do not care about theimpact their intense desires cause. We try so hard because we knowthat when the day of victory occurs the winners will take all and thelosers will be sent home in shame. To work hard and fail is the worstpossible outcome, so we push ourselves to extremes to succeed. Extremerewards invite extreme competition and all the ugliness that surroundsuch behavior. And it isn't just those who push too hard who deservethe blame, all of us support the system in our attitudes towards thewinners and losers, and thus we encourage the system towardsextremes. Such a highly competitive system produces great champions,but it also has the severe drawback of being stunningly myopic. Havinga larger perspective on competition, life, and the world we live in is aliability and as a result many of us do not even bother gathering a deepunderstanding of things. Our personal goals become all-consuming,and anyone or anything that gets in our way is viewed as being anenemy to be defeated. Long term planning is cast aside for greaterreturns on short term goals for if you are not sure that you will be ontop for long, why plan for something that will be of greater benefit tothe one who beats you and takes your place? Such systems are not stable due to lack of foresight on thepart of those within them. To some degree that is a good thing, sinceall will be given a respite from the madness as the system collapses,but a catastrophic collapse is far from enjoyable and often we chooseto support the system since it is the lesser of two evils. Speaking of evil, I, as well as Octavio Ramos, are hard atwork writing material for the new project "Eternal Devotion to theDark Goddess". Although many miles apart, thanks to the internetwe are busy co-authoring what promises to be one of the hottest trackson the disk. I plan to write out all the tracks before starting therecording process, so it will be a while before I'll have cuts from thenew CD for you to hear. Stay tuned. A big ‘Hello’ to anyone receiving the Burning Blade for thefirst time. This is the Fireaxe newsletter.

Some good reviews and a hearty hail to Fireaxe's biggest supporters

More reviews of "Victory or Death" have come in and thenew ones have been more positive than the older ones. As before, thereviewers don't go into depth about the music, sticking mainly toreporting who Fireaxe is, which bands Fireaxe sounds like, andgiving the music an overall rating. That's pretty much what every CDgets except for those the reviewer either loves or loathes, so I'm notgetting, nor am I demanding, special treatment. But what disappointsme about webzine reviews is how little publicity they have generatedfor Fireaxe. I have yet to have a single person tell me that they foundout about Fireaxe through a webzine demo review of "Victory or Death".It makes me wonder if anyone bothers reading them at all. So is it all wasted effort? Probably not, since publicity of anykind is beneficial, even bad press. A few years back someone who rana site where every week he posted a "worst of the internet" award alongwith a ridicule-filled rant stumbled across the Fireaxe site around thetime that "Lovecraftian Nightmares" was in release. The guy did apretty nasty write-up, although he was so uninformed about Fireaxethat his cheap shots completely missed their target. But not long afterthat I got an e-mail from one of his readers who had decided to listento a few Fireaxe mp3s, liked them, and wanted to order a copy of theCD. Mind you, that's not the kind of attention I'd like to get, but itjust goes to show that there is some truth behind the adage that"any press is good press". But it seems like in the super-saturated market for new musicthat good press doesn't get anyone's attention unless it's extremely goodpress, and I am thankful that Fireaxe has a number of people who havebeen so inspired by my music that they've written glowing reviews ofFireaxe in high traffic areas on the internet. They have been the oneswho have spread Fireaxe around the world, encouraging many to atleast listen to what I have to offer and decide for themselves if theylike it. A hearty hail goes out to Lord Vic and his constant praise ofFireaxe on metal-rules.com. About 90% of the people who contact meabout buying CDs tell me that it was Lord Vic who prompted them tosample Fireaxe mp3s. I also owe a great debt to Bim Landers andNicolas Bonneau for their ongoing support. Hails to you guys, andmany others, for keeping the spotlight on my works. Nicolas is my French distributor, and he'd be spreading CDsacross that beautiful country if there hadn't been a postal breakdownalong the way. No one knows what happened, but somewhere betweenhere and there an uninsured, unregistered package containing ten copiesof "Food for the Gods" almost got lost in the mail, never to be seenagain. After submitting a formal complaint to the postmaster thepackage was returned to me more than three months after I sent it out,along with a bill for the return postage. Where had it been? We are notsure, but one of the stickers on it said that it had been through Germany.Germany? Exactly how the international postal service could take a largepackage with the destination clearly written on it in big letters (FRANCE)and send it to the wrong country is beyond me. But at least I got the CDsback, and soon Nicolas will be able to go about his work spreading theanti-gospel.

The oppositional nature of consciousness

In edition 7.6 of this newsletter I wrote a short essay whichprobed the oppositional nature of ideologies. I made quite a number ofpoints, the main ones being: that all ideologies are defined in oppositionto some threat to their existence; that they are at their most powerful andmotivated when fighting against that threat; and that in the absence ofthat threat they seek out other rivals which can take the place of thevanquished opposition. In this newsletter I will make similar argumentsconcerning consciousness and how people behave in much the sameway as ideologies. But first there are a few things about ideologies thatI would like to comment on as they relate to the post-election period inthe U.S. Note that I wrote about ideologies before the last election. In George W. Bush's second inaugural address it almostseemed as if his speech writer was an avid reader of my newsletter,using my theories to construct a speech which would motivate allAmericans to destroy our adversary, tyranny, in the name of our god,Freedom. Everything that I wrote about was in evidence in the address:the warnings of complacency, the morphing of the dictatorships of oldinto current world powers, and the depiction of the entire world as adesperate struggle between good and evil. It remains to be seen justhow much those ideals are put into actions but the "Freedom Crusade"is certainly on the march. In BB7.6 I wrote, "In their quest to destroy their adversaries,ideologies can turn inwards upon themselves, conducting a campaignof ideological purification. This often becomes necessary when asubstantial number of followers cannot make the connection betweenthe current adversary and the original adversary of the ideology."By the time of the inaugural address this had already happened to agreat degree in the one area that President Bush had the most controlover, his cabinet. Out went the last of the moderates and in went theextremists and yes-men, or rather yes-persons. Furthermore, in thepreceding months there had been an ideological purge at the CIAwith a number of senior officials being forced into retirement. Addedto that was an expansion of an intelligence gathering group headed bythe pentagon which has no congressional oversight and is completelycontrolled by the executive branch. Even though it is this sort ofconsolidation of power that the U.S. was created to oppose, as longas the true believers in charge see a difference between themselvesand their enemies they will continue to seize power, in ways muchlike their foes, to use against their enemies, foreign and domestic. I'd be very worried about this situation if it weren't for thefact that control of the U.S. economy has been placed squarely in thehands of foreigners, some of whom are run by the very governmentsthat the U.S. opposes. With a massive debt and a constant need formore loans, the U.S. government and its citizens can ill afford topush their drive for "A New American Century" too far. Foreigninvestors can pull the plug at any time. The only trouble is that if theU.S. economy falls, everyone's economy falls, and so foreign lenderssee pulling the rug out from under America as a tool of last resort.Nonetheless, I feel that time is getting close. Now, turning towards the oppositional nature ofconsciousness. In the Fireaxe theory I made the followingcontentions regarding consciousness: that consciousness is createdby instilling within a person a permanent sense of inadequacy, inessence a state of constant fear; and that the deeper the sense ofinadequacy, the stronger the person is motivated, generally toserve their ideology. It is here where we can see the reason whyboth ideology and consciousness share an oppositional nature: anideology is much more unified if it, and its members, all stand togetherin opposition to a similar foe. It benefits an ideology to force itsoppositional nature on individuals. Thus, within every ideology thereare a great number of lessons that are taught to its members about thedangers of its adversary with the intent of crafting the consciousnessof its members in such a way that they fear and oppose it. This unityof vigilance solidifies the structure of the ideology as newly madeconscious members conform to the ideological system. I view consciousness as being a state of hyper-vigilancenecessary for survival within a modern society. I've discussed mytheory on consciousness elsewhere and so I will only go over it brieflyhere. The demands of the modern world require each person to havean internal model of the world which includes a model of himself orherself which they can use to perform long term planning. Longterm planning is critical in today's world, since without it you mustalways react to things as they occur, which, in our modern society, isoften far too late. You need to be able to plan for the future andvisualize yourself testing out various options to be able to make agood choice. Once you have such an internal model, you can seeyourself in your mind's eye, know that you exist, and thus areconscious. There are many dangers within our society despite its calmappearance and overly-publicized sensational crimes. Most of thesedangers come in the form of victimization and exploitation witha great many of them being perfectly legal. As a child you mustconform to avoid humiliation at the hands of your peers and workhard to live up to the expectations of your parents and teachers. Asan adult you face those same pressures and more, including living upto the expectations of your boss and spouse, providing for yourfamily, and fending off the constant assault on your wealth from alldirections. Failing in any one of these areas can result in anythingfrom mild discomfort to a major personal catastrophe, so we try hardto succeed. Successful defense requires consciousness so that we canthink through all the problems that we face and avoid falling for thetricks and traps of clever con artists. But consciousness is more thansomething which forms when dangers are imminent and then goesaway when they are distant. Consciousness is a permanent state, andthat implies a continuous source of danger. I think that consciousnessis made permanent by repeatedly exposing someone to sometimestraumatic failures until the fear of failure has been made indeliblein the mind of the individual. This can come about as a series oflesser traumatic events, a single very traumatic event, or somecombination of the two. It matters not how it comes about, since theimportant part is that the individual will always feel the fear of failureand thus will always work towards preventing it. We don't set out to traumatize our children and peers, in factwe usually set out to do the opposite since we love and respect them,but both we and our society have expectations for our children thatthey need to live up to or else they will suffer both in the present andin the future. So in order to help them to meet those expectations, weare forced to motivate them to achieve. We try to use the "carrot only"approach, but that can only get us so far. Punishment is required toprevent our children from doing things that we don't want them to doand also to prevent them from becoming spoiled, lethargic, or content.So when they fall short, and they inevitably do, the hammer comesdown. Punishment isn't necessarily a physical beating. In fact, thatis not the most effective form of punishment. Far more powerful,and potentially traumatic or damaging as well, is some sort ofdeprivation, such as taking away a beloved possession, social isolation,or withholding affection from the child. We don't want to do thesethings, but we do them because we they work: motivation is increasedand expectations are often reached where the "carrot only" approachhad failed. But there are dangers. It isn't easy to get exactly the resultswe want, usually because we are not in a rational state when we areapplying punishment, and severe trauma leading to mental disorderscan sometimes be the result. This may sound like I am contending that consciousness issome form of insanity. I wouldn't go so far as to say that, but due tothe similarities between consciousness and dissociation disorders itseems that consciousness is in essence a mild form of dissociationwith similar causes and mechanisms. Dissociation is a form of mentalparalysis, temporarily disconnecting mind from body, which stops theperson from moving or acting in any way. It is the "freeze" part of theinstinctive fight, flight, or freeze reaction to dangers and served ourancestors and predecessors well during encounters with predators wholocated their prey primarily through detecting motion. I think that inconscious people, this dissociation mechanism enables us to stop andthink whenever we encounter dangers, serving as a layer between theoutside world and our thoughts, and as a layer between our thoughtsand our actions. Since most of the dangers we face are not immediate,we can afford the luxury of waiting and thinking through our options.And since many of the dangers we face are complicated, we need toprevent ourselves from acting reflexively or impulsively lest we dothe wrong thing. Also, with practice, I think we are able to relax thetotal paralysis part of the dissociation mechanism so that we can thinkand act at the same time. We can also learn to be thinking about onething while we are doing another, allowing us to deal with dangersfull time while going about our daily lives. That is pretty much thedefinition of dissociation, a sharp division between mind and body,but not so sharp as to inhibit all action. Thus, in my view, as consciousorganisms we are constantly in fear, to a degree, and constantly tryingto work our way out of that fear. I think that the conscious state is oneof mild, controlled panic. The goal of child rearing is to place the child into this stateof controlled panic by applying punishment until the state becomespermanent. Now, it would seem that this type of child rearing wouldresult in the child having an adversarial relationship with the parentsince the parent is the one who applies the punishment. Of course,this is not desirable since the member of an ideology shouldn't cometo view a surrogate of that ideology as their adversary. So instead,the force which is responsible for a child's failure in meeting socialexpectations is said to be something other than the punishing agent.In most cases the child itself is blamed, or at least the part of thechild associated with the ideology's adversary. In Christian mythology, bad behavior is either blamed on thedevil, or stems from the evil within us all as a result of original sin.This ties bad behavior to the abstract adversary of the ideology andresults in the process of socialization being portrayed as a battlebetween good and evil for the child's soul. In more secular ideologies,bad behavior is seen as stemming from the child's animal instinctswhich must be purged so that one can become civilized. Note herethat seeing a part of one's self as being animalistic or evil and tryingto distance yourself from it contributes to the dissociative feature ofconsciousness: the child tries to dissociate his mind from his body.But regardless of ideology, during child rearing the adversary of theideology is always connected with the force which causes the constantstate of fear in the individual. Furthermore, it is that constant state offear which drives consciousness, giving it a reason for being. A childis made constantly afraid of something and is constantly trying to figureout a way to make the fear go away. But the child cannot, as the fearis a permanent feature, and thus so is conscious. The adversarialrelationship lasts a lifetime. But it is not always the case that a child accepts the ideology'sadversary as his or her own. In some cases the child will see hispunishment as unjust and see authority figures as adversaries. Thisform of anti-authoritarianism can also be bent to the will of theideology if the person can be made to see that the authority figureshe or she has contempt for are those of rival ideologies or are corruptmembers of the current ideology. I think that the majority of peoplehave more than one adversarial prototype inside them, havingexperienced different forms of at least minor trauma at the hands ofmany, and that people have a mixture of both types of adversarialrelationships: the weaker adversary which needs to be controlled orpurged, and the stronger adversary which needs to be overthrown.I also think that the mixture isn't always balanced with peopletending one way or another. Putting terms to these two archetypesI could call one conformist and authoritarian and the other rebelliousand anti-authoritarian, but in real life the labels will be blurred aspeople share both forms and express them in different situations. In the essay I wrote on the adversarial nature of ideologiesI made a rather disturbing contention that in the absence of a rivalideology which serves as an adversary, an ideology will either find anew adversary or turn inward on itself, indulging in either purificationor ideological mutation. I think that the same premise is true forconsciousness. Although the state of fear that drives consciousnessis permanent, it can grow stronger or weaker depending on externalforces which are perceived as threats. Since this force directly drivesour consciousness, our drive and energy grow stronger as our fearsbecome greater. Fear can be very motivating, and can propel us togreat heights, allowing us to reach our true potential, and thus it isin our best interests not to live in peace, but in a manageable stateof fear. And so, like ideologies, we make war on our adversariesand seek out new adversaries to replace those that we have eithervanquished or are no longer a part of our lives. And sometimeswe find surrogate adversaries to take the place of adversaries whowe cannot oppose in real life. The reason is simple: the strugglemakes us strong. It makes us who we are. This quest to defeat adversaries can take a socially positiveform, such as taking on great challenges, replacing them withgreater challenges after we've succeeded and the luster wears off ourpast glories. But the quest can also take on a socially negative form,such as individuals seeking to re-live their past traumas in search ofrevenge and finding new adversaries which will play the role of theirold ones. Since past traumas deal with adversarial relationships withauthority figures, loved ones, and peers, re-living these events oftentakes the forms of crime and disobedient behavior, deliberatelycausing harm to a spouse or loved one, searching for or simplyprovoking fights with others, or engaging in the same traumaticbehaviors experienced earlier in life, either from the submissiveside or the dominant side. The abused becoming the abuser is acommon example of reliving traumatic experiences from the past.Furthermore, since the adversary can never be truly beaten (it ispermanent in the mind) the struggle is often played out over andover, becoming pathological, as if a person was addicted to theexperience. We can see this more easily in extreme cases, but themechanism of re-living past traumas applies to milder traumasas well. How many of us know of others who always seem to getthemselves into the same situations or conflicts over and over?And how many of us seem to find ourselves re-living past traumasor acting as those we once despised? Doesn't it sometimes seem likewe are actively trying to bring these things on ourselves? We are.Although these are sometimes dangerous or self-destructive behaviors,we do them because they reinforce our identity and make us feelconscious and alive. We are at our best when we are fighting toothand nail against our adversary although our "best" may be a shockingdisplay of cruelty or pathological behavior. We do these thingsbecause our alternative is to turn inward on ourselves, engaging inself-hatred and a desire to change or purify ourselves. But eitherway we are driven by a desire to find and defeat new adversariesbe they others or ourselves. The concept of adversaries in the mind is nothing new.They're also called "inner demons", "voices in our heads", "monkeyson our backs", or simply "issues". We all have them, to one degreeor another, but only see them as a problem when they cause veryanti-social or self-destructive behaviors. The field of psychotherapyis focused around ridding people of their worst adversaries or at leastallowing people to control them. Since the Fireaxe theory states thatsince adversaries are permanent, trying to rid yourself of them isan exercise in futility. However, it is possible to change the formof your adversary by throwing off the old perceived causes of yourworst fears and adopting new ones. This is what religion has donefor centuries. Conversion is the process of freeing people from pastadversarial relationships while remaking those adversaries to be thoseof the religion. Though religious converts may claim to be free, they'vereally only traded in their old inner demons for new ones. Butconversion techniques are hardly restricted to religion, and you cansee examples of ideologies, advertisers, cults, and other institutionsusing fear to sell their message. And while sometimes they seem to beselling only beautiful dreams, beware of the adversary coming inthrough the back door. Consciousness and the permanent state of fear have asymbiotic relationship. We seek out new adversaries to make usstronger, and we need to defeat our adversaries to make the painand fear go away, at least temporarily. In essence we are trapped ina continuous cycle of creating and destroying rivals, much like howpolice shows require their writers to produce an endless successionof criminals to be put behind bars. Indeed, those shows, and movies,that we love to watch are like surrogate experiences for us. Wemeet an adversary, he is built up into a fearsome force, and thenhe is brought down to earth. We feel uncomfortable when the feargrows and relieved when it goes away, at least for a little while.Sports contests act in a similar way, as do soap operas, realitytelevision, and especially computer games. We become addicted tothese things, and our society's tremendous desire for such surrogateexperiences is strong support for an adversarial relationship lyingat the core of our being. If there is nothing that we can do about changing ourmental state, the question becomes how can we focus people towardsmore socially positive behaviors rather than pathological ones.I think that the key lies in a contention I made about ideologicalstruggle: that aggressive ideologies must continue to grow or faceinternal strife as their aggressive members will feed on each otherto satisfy their needs. Contentment is a behavior that is universallyviewed as bad by all modern societies and thus we are unable torest on our past achievements. Growth is all important, and onlyin a growing society it is possible for each person to reach a greaterheight without taking away from someone else. Without thatgrowth there will be internal conflict and pathological behaviorsof every kind. So we are compelled to grow, sometimes at greatcost. The trouble is that we live in a world which is both rapidlyexpanding its population and rapidly exhausting its resources.We cannot grow at this rate for long, and thus the future does notlook at all peaceful.

The Fireaxe theory - Outline

I. Basics - well established theories

1. Emergent systems - that complex systems can arise from theinteractions of simple things2. Natural selection - that organisms mutate, proliferate, and compete,with the "losers" becoming extinct3. Behavioral science - that neurological systems, at their core, functionaccording to the rules of conditioning4. Entropy - that within a closed system, entropy always increases,which limits the amount of transformation that can occur

II. Extensions

1. That consciousness is an emergent system: a complex system arisingin the human mind from the interaction of simple neurons.2. That civilizations are emergent systems arising from the physicalinteractions of humans whether conscious or not.3. That ideologies are emergent systems arising from the psychologicalinteractions of conscious humans4. That emergent systems follow the laws of natural selection in muchthe same way that organisms do5. That the universe is, by definition, a closed system

III. Contentions regarding consciousness

1. That consciousness is a survival advantage2. That being a member of an ideology is a survival advantage3. That making its members conscious is a necessary part of anideology's survival4. That consciousness is created by instilling within a person apermanent sense of inadequacy - in essence a state of constant fear5. That the deeper the sense of inadequacy, the stronger the personis motivated - generally to serve their ideology

IV. Contentions regarding ideological struggle

1. That ideologies fight for survival using many methods including,but not limited to, war and enslavement2. That aggression is a survival advantage3. That aggressive ideologies make members of rival ideologiesfeel afraid and inadequate which in response become more aggressive,thus creating a vicious circle4. That aggressive ideologies must continue to grow or face internalstrife as their aggressive members will feed on each other to satisfytheir needs5. That internal struggle results in ideological mutation

V. Contentions regarding the future

1. That internal strife is inevitable since the laws of entropy implythat continuous growth is not sustainable2. That the abstract bases for ideologies transcend mortality and thussuicidal aggression is not restrained by fear of death3. That ideological mutation will eventually result in the creation ofa suicidal ideology which will attempt to save the human race bydestroying it

How to order Fireaxe CDs:

Ordering Fireaxe CD's is an informal process as I am sellingthem personally out of my apartment. Simply mail me a letter whichcontains the following:

1. The names of the CDs that you want to buy.2. The address where you want the CDs sent.3. Cash, a check, or a money order for the total cost.

Here is a price list. The first number is the cost for U.S.based customers, the second is for outside the U.S. The pricesinclude shipping and handling.

Food for the Gods: $12 $14Victory or Death $5 $7Lovecraftian Nightmares $5 $7A Dream of Death $5 $7

Send everything to:

Brian Voth 1301 Medical Center Dr. #415 Chula Vista, CA 91911 USA

If you review CDs on a website or in a magazine, any oneof the single CDs (Not "Food for the Gods") is free of charge inexchange for the review. In this case all I need is a request bye-mail. Please send me the URL of your review site or copy of yourmagazine with the review in it when it is done. If you want toexchange CDs, tapes, or stuff of equivalent value, make theserequests via e-mail and we'll arrange a trade. The CDs come with a booklet filled with awesome art, aletter about the project, and some information about the CD whichcan also be found on the Fireaxe site. Lastly, if you want to print and distribute Fireaxe CDs Ican send you an additional CD which contains tiff files for all thebooklets, tray cards, and labels for each project. The tiff disk is freeso just say the word.

The Future

I’ve been focusing so hard on “Food for the Gods” that I’vehad little time to think about what I’d like to record next. Over thepast few months I’ve tossed around some ideas and have come upwith a working title and theme. The next Fireaxe work will dig evendeeper into the dark crevices of our society and our minds, pull forththe myths that we cling to and hold dear, and expose them all for whatthey are. While “A Dream of Death” explored the madness of dreams,and “Food for the Gods” described the chaos wrought upon the earthby ideologies, “Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess” will depict thepsychological enslavement of the individual in modern times. It willbe the darkest Fireaxe work ever. But don’t put your order in just yet.After wrapping up “Food for the Gods” I’ll need a while to rest andupgrade my studio. I’m spent. My goal is to deliver music to whoever wants to hear it inwhatever way is necessary. Whatever the market demands, I will supply,but I do want to avoid the mass marketing channel. Exposure is fine, butin the modern business, the substance of the music must be altered tomatch the demands of the marketplace. This would totally defeat thepurpose of why I write music in the first place. I write music because itis a way to express my emotions. What I both think and feel goes intothe songs. That is the power, Fireaxe is the channel, and any diversiondiminishes the emotive effect. Thus I try to avoid such diversions.That is how art should be.

Rights to duplicate Fireaxe materials

Currently Fireaxe is not for profit. I sell the single CDs for$5, $12 for "Food for the Gods" since it is three CDs, which coversthe production and mailing costs. For CDs sent out of the country,I'll have to charge an extra $2 per disk to cover the additional mailingcost. If you write reviews or put samples on your website I'll give you aCD for free. Since I am not making any money with the currentrecordings, you are free to make duplicates of them to distribute aslong as you obey the following guidelines:

1. You can only sell the duplications for the price of the medium or less, plus any delivery cost. You are not allowed to make any profit with the music.2. You should tell me how many copies you gave out and who got them so I can keep track. Also, if they have an e-mail address I'd like that as well so I can add them to the mailing list.3. You are likewise free to adorn any webpages or duplications with the gifs and jpgs on my website as long as you include an obvious link back to my website. This includes putting Fireaxe song samples on your site as well.4. You are free to play any Fireaxe songs (in unaltered form) provided you are an unsigned band without a marketing tie-in. You are not allowed to record those songs onto anything that you will sell.5. You are food for the gods.6. You are required to crank the song "Hounds of Tindalos" as loud as you can as often as you can. It’s your only defense against THEM. Be warned, they come through angles. Note that the CD is round. Are your speaker cabinets square?7. Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, Hastur the Unspeakable, and all other mythos creatures are purely the inventions of Lovecraft and other fiction authors. None of it is real, at least that’s what I’m going to say in court if you try to sue me for destruction of your property, house, city, or soul as a result of listening to the “Lovecraftian Nightmares” CD too much.8. You are free to play "The Rack" in school or church or any other institution bent on crushing your will and turning you into a mindless zombie slave of the corporate dominated world. Try not to develop a bad attitude about it.9. You are not free to commit suicide while listening to any Fireaxe song. I'm sorry, I'll have to prosecute. On a serious note, if you are thinking about doing it, please e-mail or call me if you have no one else to talk to. When I was in my teens the album "The Wall" by Pink Floyd used to really get to me. Just hearing songs like "Comfortably Numb", and "Hey You" would get me pretty depressed and mildly suicidal. I'm just trying to say that I've been there. If my music is having that effect on you, please get in touch. You aren't alone.

The gist of it is that you can do just about anything with themusic as long as you don't profit from it and that I get some sort ofcredit for having written it. I'm open to any methods of distributingmy music, such as compilation tapes or CDs, radio play, or recordinglabel distribution. However, you will need my direct permission todo so or some kind of legal agreement.

Ending Comments

Any comments or questions are welcome. If anyone has anyupdates on their projects, I'd like to hear from you. I know thereare a few people out there working on some cool things that I haven'theard from in a while. Drop me an e-mail regarding how you'regetting along.

Brian

--"You shall break down their alters, and dash into pieces their pillars, hew down their asherim, and burn their graven images with fire. For I am a jealous god and I shall have no rivals."

"It is not possible to manage something you cannot define." - Alan Greenspan, referring to the money supply, and in essence stating that he cannot do the job that he was hired to do

"But out of control and it swallows us whole. A ravenous abomination. A death machine." -Fireaxe "Death Machine"

Many systems, political, economic, and religious, tend towardsgreater and greater complexity as they are required to do more and morethings. Examples are ever-present: the EU's proposed constitution withhundreds of articles, the US's tax code with thousands of pages, and theCatholic church's endless reams of doctrine. All require experts to studythem for years to try to fathom out what they mean, and even then expertsoften disagree. And to make things even more difficult, when such codesare enshrined into law they often have many problematic unintendedconsequences which force politicians, lawyers, and priests to add yetmore rules in the hopes of fixing the system. Over time, complex systemsgrow beyond anyone's ability to understand them let alone control them,and yet those systems are the ones that control our lives. That's hardlya comforting thought. Sitting at the top of each pile of doctrine we generally have aperson or persons who we regard as the masters of the system. ThePope presides over the Catholic church, the Supreme Court presidesover US law, and Alan Greenspan presides over the US dollar. Eachwields great power over the system and speaks with great authority. Welike to think that they can control the complex systems that we haveentrusted to them, but in truth each system has a great degree ofindependence from its master. At the core of each system lies a massof individuals each making independent decisions without necessarilyconsidering the impact of their decisions on the rest of the system. Ifonly one or two people show poor judgment, or proceed in a novel andpotentially dangerous manner the system will usually manage just finewith few disruptions. If a larger number of people do the same, thesystem can become destabilized, but it can usually be brought back undercontrol when the masters of the system create more laws, adjust certainfactors, or add more doctrine to the holy texts. But if a large mass ofpeople test the very limits of a system, the results can be catastrophic.It is at those times that the masters of the systems can only watchhelplessly as the system collapses. Their control is not absolute. Throughout history this has happened over and over. Eachtime we come up with a new set of fixes to correct the failures of pastsystems and everything seems to be working once more. However, yearslater the system inevitably fails once again, but this time in a new waythat no one could have predicted or prevented. The pattern is cyclicalin nature. After each major collapse, people behave conservatively forfear that another collapse will happen again. Slowly the new systeminspires confidence, and caution is set aside in favor of risk and novelty.Stability gradually goes from being something that is cherished andprotected to being something that is taken for granted. Eventually riskand excesses rule the day and the system is ripped from its stablemoorings. Destabilization follows and there is no way back. Despitesome often extreme attempts to save it, the system collapses, spreadingchaos on destruction in its wake. Then the cycle begins anew. I see the current cycle coming to a close. There are few whoare still alive during the economic collapse of the 1930's and the worldwar that followed. Not many are left in power who have lived throughthat era and thus few truly understand that the stability that appears topermeate our financial and political systems could suddenly disappearand plunge the world into chaos. Many simply take it for granted thatit could never happen again and that we're too smart to allow it to do so.I see a number of leaders taking great risks and using their power inways that are destabilizing the current system. It appears like a globalgame of chicken, but there is a method to their madness of our leaders.If you push farther than the other guy, but don't go too far yourself, youwin. But how far is too far? I think that we will find out soon enough. Speaking of new and destabilizing ideas, "Eternal Devotionto the Dark Goddess" is slowly coming to fruition. As my health isimproving, the tracks are forming, and the recording process maybe in full swing before the end of the year. Of course, if the globaleconomy collapses this year or the next, all bets are off concerninga release date, but as long as there is life within my body, there willalso exist the will to deliver the darkest Fireaxe CD of them all. A big ‘Hello’ to anyone receiving the Burning Blade for thefirst time. This is the Fireaxe newsletter.

Fireaxe salutes Wikipedia and Perry Grayson

Only recently have I been made aware of Wikipedia, aninternet based encyclopedia, and I have to say that I am impressedby what I've seen so far. Unlike other internet encyclopedias, Wikipediais an open book, meaning that it allows anyone at all to add, update, orcorrect information for any given entry. This enables it to have hundredsif not thousands of authors, each experts in their own field, adding to amassive knowledge base which covers everything from history to scienceto pop culture. It also allows you to add external links to the pages sothat it can connect the entire internet to its knowledge base. It's powerfuland its scope is vast. Just search for "Where's the beef?" and you'll seewhat I mean.

I know what you're thinking, that having Wikipedia open sothat anyone can make changes is dangerous or ill-advised. Anyone canvandalize or delete anything that someone else has contributed, or simplypost a bunch of nonsense that sounds authoritative. But Wikipedia alsostores the history of changes for every entry, so if you find a page thathas been vandalized you can easily roll it back to the unblemishedversion. It's not a perfect system, but I am surprised how good it is. One day I decided to do a search for Fireaxe and discoveredthat there was no entry for my musical project. No problem. With justa few clicks and I added the entry along with a link to the Fireaxe homepage and a brief description. If anyone of you wants to add your twocents to the entry go right ahead. Learning the form is pretty easy.

You can also search other entries just like any good searchengine and when I searched for Fireaxe I stumbled upon a very goodwrite-up of horror author Frank Belknap Long, one of H.P. Lovecraft'scircle of fellow pulp sci-fi/horror authors. The Fireaxe song "Hounds ofTindalos" was close enough to Long's vision to merit a reference on thepage. I quickly added a link where Fireaxe was mentioned and wonderedwho would have thought to include Fireaxe in the Frank Belknap Longentry.

Reading farther down the page I discovered that it was probablymy friend and fellow metal musician/Lovecraft enthusiast Perry Grayson.He'd included a link to a biography that he'd written on Frank BelknapLong which was too long to be included in Wikipedia, but which fits inperfectly as an external link:

If you're a Lovecraft/horror enthusiast, give his article a read.And to Perry, if you were the one who wrote Fireaxe into the FrankBelknap Long entry, a big thank you to you. Wikipedia rocks.

Top of the Rock

If you don't have your health, you have nothing. Sure, it's atired old cliché, but there will very likely be a time in your life whereyou realize that nothing is more true. Protect your health, preserve it,and when it tries to get away, fight as hard as you can to get it back.I know that from experience. I've written about my struggles with myhealth over the past three years: about how a malignant tumor nearlydid me in and left me with only one kidney, and about how the suturesfrom that operation caused me a lot of pain and prevented me from fullyhealing the seven inch scar until I paid to have them removed. Now Ihave another chapter to add to the saga. I'd like it to be the last. At the end of last year I had the sutures from my surgical scarremoved, which solved the problems I was having there completely.Note that those were internal sutures. They held the muscles together,not the skin. After six months of healing I didn't need them anymore,but removing them would require another surgery, something that wasrarely ever done. The sutures were meant to be permanent. The troublewas that the surgeon had sewn them in using an outdated technique.As a result the sutures dug in and caused sharp stabbing pains wheneverI used my abdominal muscles. It was frustrating, and what was worsewas that all the doctors and surgeons that I saw told me that the problemwas due to scar tissue, not the sutures, and that my troubles would slowlygo away over time. They were all wrong, completely wrong. But I stillhad to pay to have the sutures removed. My insurance wouldn't coverthe procedure. The bastards. But anyway, I'm just glad that I couldafford it. It needed to be done. In the months that followed I found myself in a similarsituation once more. My abdomen was fine, but my energy levels haddropped again. They'd been down ever since I first got cancer andhad been drifting between low and very low ever since. Somethingwas wrong with me but all the blood tests and scans showed nothing.My doctors had no idea what the problem was and told me that Iwould either get better with time, or suggested that I was depressedand needed something like Prozac to make me feel better. I would havebeen insulted by the idea that depression was causing my fatigue, but Iknow that doctors sometimes get kickbacks for prescribing populardrugs. My doctors simply had no other answers for me. So onceagain I went back to the internet to try to figure out what was wrongwith me. I began to wonder if I was going to have to actually become adoctor in order to find a cure. I was already taking over part of thejob that my doctors and specialists were supposed to do. They couldonly give me fifteen minutes of their time every month and that is notenough time to look into something that doesn't immediately show upon the standard tests. As a result, "Do no harm" became "Do nothing".I was on my own. Like it or not, that is the direction that our healthcare system has gone in recent years. If you have something that modernmedicine has identified, like cancer, you get prompt and powerfultreatment. But if you have something that is unusual and difficult todiagnose, you might have to do a lot of the legwork yourself, especiallyif it is a chronic lack of energy. Most people will write you off asmentally ill, a malingerer, or a lazy slacker if you complain aboutbeing fatigued all the time. None of those labels stick to me save for the "mentally ill"one (he he). And although I may be a number of things, depressedisn't one of them. Sure, I write depressing music and I may not havea positive outlook on the future and the world, but I have always had astrong drive to do my best with whatever hand I get dealt. I look at itvery simply: there is no alternative, so always fight hard. I'd taken up cycling back in the late 90s. That was when Imoved out to California and noticed that there were all these bike laneseverywhere. That was a huge change from Michigan, where youronly riding choices on city streets were an irregular sidewalk and apothole-ridden gap between speeding pickup trucks and the curb.Once in California I broke out my old ten-speed and whipped myselfback into shape. In time I fell in love with the sport and increased thedistances that I would go on my rides. By mid-2001 I was able to rideover a hundred miles in a single day and did that on most weekendsduring the summer. It was great. In July I'd watch Lance ride live onTV in the Tour de France in the morning, and then cruise up into thehills for my own stage in the afternoon. Lots of Fireaxe tracks gotwritten while I was out on those long rides, "The Citadel Must Fall"and "River of Madness" being two of them. During the summer of2001 I rode long and I rode hard and I enjoyed every minute of it. That was when cancer struck. No one knows how you getkidney cancer, but I suspect that it was because I was drinking thefilthy California tap water and breathing filthy Saddleback Valleyair on those long rides. The air is cleaner where I live now, but thetap water is even worse. The stuff tastes like jet fuel. I'm not kidding.I drink distilled water now exclusively and when I get a mouthful ofsouthern California tap water I want to spit it out. It's disgusting. But along with cancer, something else struck me that yearand the next as I slowly lost my ability to ride long distances and thenlost the ability to ride at all. My immune system was getting moreand more taxed by the cancer and ended up seriously weakened. That'snever a good thing because there are dormant infections in our bodiesthat are held in check by our immune systems. When our immunesystems become weakened, those infections wake up and spread around,making you sick and lethargic, and some of them have adapted to havesuch survival mechanisms as triggering the hyper-coagulation of yourblood. Hyper-coagulation is where your blood gets thicker and the wallsof your capillaries end up coated with a layer of fibrous tissue. Theinfections then hide in that layer which protects them from yourimmune system. The layer even protects the infections from antibioticsand thus you relapse after taking courses of them. It's nasty shit and Ihad it bad. But as I said, none of it showed up on the standard testsmy doctors performed. Of course, neither does cancer until it is justabout to kill you. So I wasn't going to wait around and do nothing.I had to find out what was wrong with me. Without the internet there would be no Fireaxe. And to behonest, without the internet there might be no Brian Voth anymore.I'm not sure if it has saved my life, but the internet has helped meimprove my health on numerous occasions. This is another one ofthose. While searching for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome the followinglink came up:

It was written by Dr. Holtorf who came to realize thatChronic Fatigue Syndrome was a very real and very devastatingsyndrome when he came down with it many years ago. I'm glad thathe did, in a way, since he has figured out a cause and treatment forthe syndrome. His ideas are new, and not yet accepted, but I waswilling to try anything that was scientifically sound and his theorycertainly is. Of course, I don't believe without proof and neither does Dr.Holtorf's clinic. So we got proof. Independently performed blood testsshowed that I was suffering from everything that his theory predicts:hyper-coagulation of the blood, no less than five chronic infections,high values of reverse T3 - a measure that escapes most thyroiddoctors, and a weakened but highly active immune system. Dr. Holtorfhas his shit together. The best proof of all has come recently afterseveral months of treatment. My energy is coming back and I'm backon my bike. I'm not all the way back. Maybe I'll get there. Dr. Holtorfdoesn't guarantee 100% recovery. I think that's because once theinfections get into your system you can never completely get rid ofthem. So you need some kind of continuing maintenance. It's alsopossible that Dr. Holtorf is holding back on the final piece of thecure so that he can rake in extra cash in treatment. I don't reallyknow. But a few weeks ago I was feeling good and so I set my sightson a milestone that I've wanted to achieve ever since I had cancersurgery in March of 2003. There's a climb sixteen miles east of where I live. Theroad goes up for more than seven miles and the grade averagesabout five and a half percent. It's not quite an Alpine climb, butit's long and nasty and takes about forty-five minutes to get to the top.Of course, Lance could do it in twenty-five, but most people can'teven push a bike to the top let alone ride all the way up. It's hard. After cancer surgery I had started riding again and I had triedto get to the top of that climb. I got close twice, but never all the way.Then the Chronic Fatigue rose up and slowly shut down my ability toexercise. I had to stop trying and I wondered if I'd ever be able toget to the top of that hill again. I kept telling myself that I would.I imagined myself at the top, holding my bike over my head andshouting victoriously. Getting to the top was going to be a symbolof my victory over cancer. But as the fatigue grew and grew, I beganto doubt if that would ever happen. Dr. Holtorf's treatment turned my body into a war zone.I was taking a handful of pills every day. I was taking drugs to teardown the fibrin linings on my blood vessels, drugs to kill bacteria,viruses, and fungi, drugs to strengthen my immune system, and awhole gob of anti-oxidants and other pills to clean up the carnage.The infections took their toll, but after weeks of struggling I was ableto exercise again without feeling like a basket case for days afterwards.So I began to get myself back into shape. My body was respondingonce again and slowly I was getting stronger. I took longer and longerrides and one day I felt strong enough to climb a mile up that steep hillto see if I could handle the strain. I could, and so I decided that thefollowing week I would make another attempt at the ascent. Perhaps I wasn't ready. Perhaps I was too ambitious.Pushing myself is one of my faults and it may have contributed tome getting cancer in the first place. Still I had to try. I loaded upwith gear, carbs, and clean water and headed towards the big hill.It was more brutal than I remembered. That was because I wasn'tin as good a shape as I had been years before. But I took things slowand kept telling myself that if I felt that I couldn't make it that I couldtry again next weekend. The sun was pounding and I was sweatingprofusely. By the time I got three-quarters of the way up there was nodry spot on my shirt to clean my glasses. I had to stop and rest and Iwondered if I could finish the climb. I was tired, but I still felt like Icould go farther. The last mile and a half of the climb was the hardest.The grade there is seven percent and it doesn't let up. I hadn't beenpast that point since I got cancer. But now I felt better, and so I wentfor it. It was hot. I had to go slow. But my legs kept churning.I kept waiting for my body to give up and tell me to stop but itnever did. I didn't want to give up but I was ready to if I felt thatI had to. I kept going. I didn't need to get to the top that day, butsomehow I did. Yes, I made it. I had returned to a place where Ihadn't been for almost three years. It felt fantastic. At first I was too tired to celebrate. I had to wait a fewminutes before finally hoisting my bike aloft and screaming outmy victory over cancer, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the doctorswho were wrong, and the many problems in our health care system.I finally felt like I had won. And as I came flying down out of themountains at a modest 30+ miles per hour with the wind rushingpast and my legs pushing me faster I began to remember who itwas that I used to be. Victory at last. Maybe this is a short-lived recovery. Maybe there'ssomething else inside me that I'm going to have to battle in thenear future. Maybe the next time I have to fight I'm not going tobe able to win. But there is one thing that I know for sure, that Iwill always be fighting: fighting to stay alive, fighting to get whatI want, and fighting to be who I am. And to be honest, I wouldn'thave it any other way.

The Fireaxe theory - Outline

I. Basics - well established theories

1. Emergent systems - that complex systems can arise from theinteractions of simple things2. Natural selection - that organisms mutate, proliferate, and compete,with the "losers" becoming extinct3. Behavioral science - that neurological systems, at their core, functionaccording to the rules of conditioning4. Entropy - that within a closed system, entropy always increases,which limits the amount of transformation that can occur

II. Extensions

1. That consciousness is an emergent system: a complex system arisingin the human mind from the interaction of simple neurons.2. That civilizations are emergent systems arising from the physicalinteractions of humans whether conscious or not.3. That ideologies are emergent systems arising from the psychologicalinteractions of conscious humans4. That emergent systems follow the laws of natural selection in muchthe same way that organisms do5. That the universe is, by definition, a closed system

III. Contentions regarding consciousness

1. That consciousness is a survival advantage2. That being a member of an ideology is a survival advantage3. That making its members conscious is a necessary part of anideology's survival4. That consciousness is created by instilling within a person apermanent sense of inadequacy - in essence a state of constant fear5. That the deeper the sense of inadequacy, the stronger the personis motivated - generally to serve their ideology

IV. Contentions regarding ideological struggle

1. That ideologies fight for survival using many methods including,but not limited to, war and enslavement2. That aggression is a survival advantage3. That aggressive ideologies make members of rival ideologiesfeel afraid and inadequate which in response become more aggressive,thus creating a vicious circle4. That aggressive ideologies must continue to grow or face internalstrife as their aggressive members will feed on each other to satisfytheir needs5. That internal struggle results in ideological mutation

V. Contentions regarding the future

1. That internal strife is inevitable since the laws of entropy implythat continuous growth is not sustainable2. That the abstract bases for ideologies transcend mortality and thussuicidal aggression is not restrained by fear of death3. That ideological mutation will eventually result in the creation ofa suicidal ideology which will attempt to save the human race bydestroying it

How to order Fireaxe CDs:

Ordering Fireaxe CD's is an informal process as I am sellingthem personally out of my apartment. Simply mail me a letter whichcontains the following:

1. The names of the CDs that you want to buy.2. The address where you want the CDs sent.3. Cash, a check, or a money order for the total cost.

Here is a price list. The first number is the cost for U.S.based customers, the second is for outside the U.S. The pricesinclude shipping and handling.

Food for the Gods: $12 $14Victory or Death $5 $7Lovecraftian Nightmares $5 $7 - Sold outA Dream of Death $3 $5 - slim only - booklet out of print

Send everything to:

Brian Voth 1301 Medical Center Dr. #415 Chula Vista, CA 91911 USA

If you review CDs on a website or in a magazine, any oneof the single CDs (Not "Food for the Gods") is free of charge inexchange for the review. In this case all I need is a request bye-mail. Please send me the URL of your review site or copy of yourmagazine with the review in it when it is done. If you want toexchange CDs, tapes, or stuff of equivalent value, make theserequests via e-mail and we'll arrange a trade. The CDs come with a booklet filled with awesome art, aletter about the project, and some information about the CD whichcan also be found on the Fireaxe site. Lastly, if you want to print and distribute Fireaxe CDs Ican send you an additional CD which contains tiff files for all thebooklets, tray cards, and labels for each project. The tiff disk is freeso just say the word.

The Future

I’ve been focusing so hard on “Food for the Gods” that I’vehad little time to think about what I’d like to record next. Over thepast few months I’ve tossed around some ideas and have come upwith a working title and theme. The next Fireaxe work will dig evendeeper into the dark crevices of our society and our minds, pull forththe myths that we cling to and hold dear, and expose them all for whatthey are. While “A Dream of Death” explored the madness of dreams,and “Food for the Gods” described the chaos wrought upon the earthby ideologies, “Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess” will depict thepsychological enslavement of the individual in modern times. It willbe the darkest Fireaxe work ever. But don’t put your order in just yet.After wrapping up “Food for the Gods” I’ll need a while to rest andupgrade my studio. I’m spent. My goal is to deliver music to whoever wants to hear it inwhatever way is necessary. Whatever the market demands, I will supply,but I do want to avoid the mass marketing channel. Exposure is fine, butin the modern business, the substance of the music must be altered tomatch the demands of the marketplace. This would totally defeat thepurpose of why I write music in the first place. I write music because itis a way to express my emotions. What I both think and feel goes intothe songs. That is the power, Fireaxe is the channel, and any diversiondiminishes the emotive effect. Thus I try to avoid such diversions.That is how art should be.

Rights to duplicate Fireaxe materials

Currently Fireaxe is not for profit. I sell the single CDs for$5, $12 for "Food for the Gods" since it is three CDs, which coversthe production and mailing costs. For CDs sent out of the country,I'll have to charge an extra $2 per disk to cover the additional mailingcost. If you write reviews or put samples on your website I'll give you aCD for free. Since I am not making any money with the currentrecordings, you are free to make duplicates of them to distribute aslong as you obey the following guidelines:

1. You can only sell the duplications for the price of the medium or less, plus any delivery cost. You are not allowed to make any profit with the music.2. You should tell me how many copies you gave out and who got them so I can keep track. Also, if they have an e-mail address I'd like that as well so I can add them to the mailing list.3. You are likewise free to adorn any webpages or duplications with the gifs and jpgs on my website as long as you include an obvious link back to my website. This includes putting Fireaxe song samples on your site as well.4. You are free to play any Fireaxe songs (in unaltered form) provided you are an unsigned band without a marketing tie-in. You are not allowed to record those songs onto anything that you will sell.5. You are food for the gods.6. You are required to crank the song "Hounds of Tindalos" as loud as you can as often as you can. It’s your only defense against THEM. Be warned, they come through angles. Note that the CD is round. Are your speaker cabinets square?7. Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, Hastur the Unspeakable, and all other mythos creatures are purely the inventions of Lovecraft and other fiction authors. None of it is real, at least that’s what I’m going to say in court if you try to sue me for destruction of your property, house, city, or soul as a result of listening to the “Lovecraftian Nightmares” CD too much.8. You are free to play "The Rack" in school or church or any other institution bent on crushing your will and turning you into a mindless zombie slave of the corporate dominated world. Try not to develop a bad attitude about it.9. You are not free to commit suicide while listening to any Fireaxe song. I'm sorry, I'll have to prosecute. On a serious note, if you are thinking about doing it, please e-mail or call me if you have no one else to talk to. When I was in my teens the album "The Wall" by Pink Floyd used to really get to me. Just hearing songs like "Comfortably Numb", and "Hey You" would get me pretty depressed and mildly suicidal. I'm just trying to say that I've been there. If my music is having that effect on you, please get in touch. You aren't alone.

The gist of it is that you can do just about anything with themusic as long as you don't profit from it and that I get some sort ofcredit for having written it. I'm open to any methods of distributingmy music, such as compilation tapes or CDs, radio play, or recordinglabel distribution. However, you will need my direct permission todo so or some kind of legal agreement.

Ending Comments

Any comments or questions are welcome. If anyone has anyupdates on their projects, I'd like to hear from you. I know thereare a few people out there working on some cool things that I haven'theard from in a while. Drop me an e-mail regarding how you'regetting along.

Brian

--"Maybe God wants us to fight. To spill each other's blood and take our brothers' lives. Sitting there in heaven with a smile on his face. Our wars are his sport as we kill in his name."

"I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. Death before being dishonored anymore." - military ethicist Col. Ted Westhusing's suicide note

"Westhusing struggled with the idea that monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war. This, she said, was a flaw. 'Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people working in the private sector was surprisingly limited,' wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach. 'He could not shift his mind-set from the military notion of completing a mission irrespective of cost, nor could he change his belief that doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do should be the sole motivator for business'." - The L.A. Times, reporting a military psychologist's evaluation of Ted Westhusing revealing a disturbing tolerance for military contractors who flout ethics, morality, and the law in the pursuit of profit.

Many times during history class, reading through the vastvolumes of past events, and watching documentaries on some of themore educational television stations I've asked myself the famousrhetorical question, "What were they thinking?". I mean, honestly.It is as if you could replace the title of any college level history classwith something like, "Extreme Human Stupidity 101". Spending twentyyears dragging enormous rocks across the desert to build a pyramid isalmost completely futile, but at least when you're done you have apyramid to admire and it sure beats being buried alive with the corpseof the pharaoh. Compare that with the endless succession of warsthrough the ages fought for reasons that seem trivial today where allyour hard work, risk, and sacrifice ends up merely relocating gold andriches from one king's palace to another's. (To be fair there is the joyof rape and plunder along with the feeling that you're somehow specialbecause you survived the fighting, if you survived that is, but is it worthspending ten years away from your family, land, and loved ones for afew nights of revelry?) How easy it is to look back at all that chaosand struggle and rest happily in the belief that we have overcome allthose idiotic obsessions. Easy indeed. We can look back on the Crusades and theInquisition and the witch trials and shake our heads. We can wonderwhat church leaders were thinking when they tortured people intoconfession and what crusaders were thinking when they murderedJews for pleasure while on their way to Jerusalem. Those people ofthe past were certainly nothing like us. We are enlightened. We canlook back on the madness that possessed the people of Germany in the1930s as they went from building a magnificent new nation from theashes of the old to building a war machine that killed tens of millionsand exterminated millions more in cold blood. Those evil Germanswere nothing like us, but their descendants have seen the light andnow they're free. And we can laugh at the follies of the stock marketspeculators and the greedy bankers who brought forth a world wideeconomic disaster in the 1930s with their voracious appetites for yetmore money. They must have been blind not to have seen the dangers.It's a good thing that we have learned from their mistakes so that thingslike that can never happen again. Yes, there's nothing like a good bout of relative peace andstability to make us all believe that we've entered a new age of prosperity.The arguments are persuasive: nuclear weapons and mutual assureddestruction have forced the major powers away from war and towardsnegotiation to settle disputes; computerized banking and interconnectedworld markets have integrated the world and brought about majorimprovements in efficiency and productivity; and the internet itself hasbrought forth a global social revolution that is only beginning to unfold.With a little spin and a few well picked statistics our global future canbe made out to look like utopia is finally in our grasp. World War Two,the great turning point in history according to many American Pundits,is behind us and civilization has won. World Peace is now upon us forgood, provided that we exterminate all those pesky terrorists who hateall this wonderful progress. Like the grossly over-priced real estate all around me, I'm notbuying it. The closer I look at the events unfolding, the more I see allthe signs of humanity falling into the same traps of old albeit in newand different forms. I see truth withering on the vine as people seekout those who tell them what they want to hear. The entirety of thenews media market, consisting of television, radio, the internet, andword of mouth, is becoming like a modern day Tower of Babel and Isee how each of us holding a well established version of the truthwhich is incompatible with other people's versions is preventing usfrom communicating with each other. I see lofty ideals cut down by the power of fear, loathing, anda desire for revenge. Christians are acting in appallingly unchristianways, those sworn to uphold the constitution are shredding it instead,police state apologists who say that they're patriots write that torture isnecessary to defend us from tyranny, respected investigative journalistsbetray our trust by presenting forgeries as fact, and the act of forcingdemocracy down people's throats seems to be perfectly fine with mostpeople as long as we don't lose too many soldiers in the process. It'sfine if those other people die, but not if we do. I see common sense and respect for one's neighbor sacrificedon the altar of greed. We export our good jobs while "importing" cheaplabor to do the jobs that "Americans won't do", bankruptcy is now alegitimate business strategy to force unions into deep concessions, warand disaster profiteering are reaching epidemic levels, and we buy SUVsso that if we get into a serious accident we will be more likely to survive(and, incidentally, the other guy is more likely to die - but, fuck him!). I see how these things fan their own flames. People who getvictimized often have to adopt the same devious methods as their rivalsto compete in a world of sleeping or partisan watchdogs. The constantstruggle incites the masses to form into mobs, deepening the divisionsbetween social, racial, religious, and political classes. History is speakinglouder and louder but we refuse to listen. Indeed, the question: "Whatwere they thinking?" has become "What are we thinking?". Now that Ican see it happening I know the answer: we aren't thinking. We've letour dreams, our emotions, and our desires give us tunnel vision, at leastthose of us who have a choice about what we do, and the big picture isonly a distraction which can lead us astray. After all the "big picture"is just someone else's opinion, isn't it? So like the noble Col. Westhusing it's difficult for me to sitby and watch the world slowly disintegrate while being powerless toprevent it. Of course, I'm not about to kill myself as he did. I don'tconsider myself responsible for the actions of others and I don't feeldishonored by the actions of thugs masquerading as mercenaries andsoldiers. Well, actually I do feel dishonored, just not to the point ofshame as deep as Col. Westhusing felt. But I always thought that itwas me who was flawed for not feeling so strongly about Americanideals, not the Colonel, who volunteered to go to Iraq and fight thegood fight. It seems as though the American ideology born after WorldWar Two has finally died with Col. Westhusing. Where once we hadpresidents like Truman, who denounced war profiteering as treasonand stamped it out, and Eisenhower, who warned of the influence ofthe military-industrial complex, we now have presidents who greenlight unethical behavior and shirk accountability. The new Americanideology has been decades in the making and the unethical andirresponsible behavior which characterizes it has penetrated deeplyinto every corner of this nation and beyond. I'd like to see it all goaway, but I know that it won't until the next example of ExtremeHuman Stupidity reaches critical mass and teaches us all a longoverdue lesson. Like I've said before, I'd love to be wrong and I'mnot looking forward to the future if I'm right, but like hell if I'mgoing to just sit here and hope that everything will work out nicely. Speaking of critical mass, "Eternal Devotion to the DarkGoddess" is now completely written. Recording will begin shortlyas soon as I plunge some hard earned dollars into some choice newgear and whip my voice and fingers back into shape. It looks like2006 is going to be a productive year for Fireaxe. A big ‘Hello’ to anyone receiving the Burning Blade for thefirst time. This is the Fireaxe newsletter.

Recording set to begin on "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess"

It's been over two years since I flipped the last few bits on"Food for the Gods", backed up all my files, and put away all myrecording equipment. At that time I was wondering if there waseven going to be another Fireaxe CD after the massive triple-diskeffort since my health was continuing to deteriorate even after mycancerous kidney was removed. I've documented those struggles inpast editions of The Burning Blade and it has been a long hard roadback to good health, or at least to good enough health. It's been along time since I've felt as good as I do now and I'm very happy tobe able to get back into the musical grind. It's time to throw downthe gauntlet once more and let fly with another screaming CD. Fireaxe music is challenging music and "Eternal Devotionto the Dark Goddess" will not be an exception. In fact it will likelybe the most challenging Fireaxe CD of them all both musically andthematically. Like "A Dream of Death" and "Food for the Gods","Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess" will be a concept albumwith each track building upon the last and until the crushing finalact has left the listener both satisfied and blown away. I've alwaysbeen partial to concept albums, especially those that could bedescribed by the term "rock opera". Sure, heavy metal is great musicto bang your head to or fire you up before a big event, but metal canalso be much more than just another form of modern music. Metalcan aspire to greatness. I haven't watched very many plays, operas, or movie musicalsin my life, but they have always struck me as being strongly expressivein a way that non-musical productions cannot. Music can convey rawemotional power and metal is no exception especially when it comesto focused anger. But in the hands of a fine musician, metal cancapture a wide range of emotions and be as expressive as any formof music. I've always wanted to be that kind of musician and put thestories that I wanted to tell up on stage backed by the kind of musicthat I wanted to hear. That vision has been the driving force behindFireaxe and is why the music sounds the way that it does. Fireaxesongs are rather long and flow through a number of movements andmoods. This is because I want to say something more than what afew verses and choruses can deliver. Thus I find myself recordingconcept albums, which are probably the closest that I will ever getto producing my own rock opera. I'm not saying that I've achieved greatness, or that Fireaxeis so much better than all the other metal bands. I'm just saying thatI've been setting my sights a lot higher, or at least in a differentdirection, than where the vast majority of musicians set theirs.Whether or not I hit my mark is up to the listener. I know that forat least some of you, I've hit that mark, and hearing and reading yourfeedback is a very rewarding feeling. Now I take aim once more.

The Fireaxe theory - Outline

I. Basics - well established theories

1. Emergent systems - that complex systems can arise from theinteractions of simple things2. Natural selection - that organisms mutate, proliferate, and compete,with the "losers" becoming extinct3. Behavioral science - that neurological systems, at their core, functionaccording to the rules of conditioning4. Entropy - that within a closed system, entropy always increases,which limits the amount of transformation that can occur

II. Extensions

1. That consciousness is an emergent system: a complex system arisingin the human mind from the interaction of simple neurons.2. That civilizations are emergent systems arising from the physicalinteractions of humans whether conscious or not.3. That ideologies are emergent systems arising from the psychologicalinteractions of conscious humans4. That emergent systems follow the laws of natural selection in muchthe same way that organisms do5. That the universe is, by definition, a closed system

III. Contentions regarding consciousness

1. That consciousness is a survival advantage2. That being a member of an ideology is a survival advantage3. That making its members conscious is a necessary part of anideology's survival4. That consciousness is created by instilling within a person apermanent sense of inadequacy - in essence a state of constant fear5. That the deeper the sense of inadequacy, the stronger the personis motivated - generally to serve their ideology

IV. Contentions regarding ideological struggle

1. That ideologies fight for survival using many methods including,but not limited to, war and enslavement2. That aggression is a survival advantage3. That aggressive ideologies make members of rival ideologiesfeel afraid and inadequate which in response become more aggressive,thus creating a vicious circle4. That aggressive ideologies must continue to grow or face internalstrife as their aggressive members will feed on each other to satisfytheir needs5. That internal struggle results in ideological mutation

V. Contentions regarding the future

1. That internal strife is inevitable since the laws of entropy implythat continuous growth is not sustainable2. That the abstract bases for ideologies transcend mortality and thussuicidal aggression is not restrained by fear of death3. That ideological mutation will eventually result in the creation ofa suicidal ideology which will attempt to save the human race bydestroying it

How to order Fireaxe CDs:

Ordering Fireaxe CD's is an informal process as I am sellingthem personally out of my apartment. Simply mail me a letter whichcontains the following:

1. The names of the CDs that you want to buy.2. The address where you want the CDs sent.3. Cash, a check, or a money order for the total cost.

Here is a price list. The first number is the cost for U.S.based customers, the second is for outside the U.S. The pricesinclude shipping and handling.

Food for the Gods: $12 $14Victory or Death $5 $7Lovecraftian Nightmares $5 $7 - Sold outA Dream of Death $3 $5 - slim only - booklet out of print

Send everything to:

Brian Voth 1301 Medical Center Dr. #415 Chula Vista, CA 91911 USA

If you review CDs on a website or in a magazine, any oneof the single CDs (Not "Food for the Gods") is free of charge inexchange for the review. In this case all I need is a request bye-mail. Please send me the URL of your review site or copy of yourmagazine with the review in it when it is done. If you want toexchange CDs, tapes, or stuff of equivalent value, make theserequests via e-mail and we'll arrange a trade. The CDs come with a booklet filled with awesome art, aletter about the project, and some information about the CD whichcan also be found on the Fireaxe site. Lastly, if you want to print and distribute Fireaxe CDs Ican send you an additional CD which contains tiff files for all thebooklets, tray cards, and labels for each project. The tiff disk is freeso just say the word.

The Future

For the rest of this year and part of the next I will be recordingthe next Fireaxe CD entitled "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess".I'd like to have it complete by the end of 2006. The new CD will digdeep into the dark crevices of our society and our minds, pull forth themyths that we cling to and hold dear, and expose them all for whatthey are. While “A Dream of Death” explored the madness of dreams,and “Food for the Gods” described the chaos wrought upon the earthby ideologies, “Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess” will depict thepsychological enslavement of the individual in modern times. It willbe the darkest Fireaxe work ever. My goal is to deliver music to whoever wants to hear it inwhatever way is necessary. Whatever the market demands, I will supply,but I do want to avoid the mass marketing channel. Exposure is fine, butin the modern business, the substance of the music must be altered tomatch the demands of the marketplace. This would totally defeat thepurpose of why I write music in the first place. I write music because itis a way to express my emotions. What I both think and feel goes intothe songs. That is the power, Fireaxe is the channel, and any diversiondiminishes the emotive effect. Thus I try to avoid such diversions.That is how art should be.

Rights to duplicate Fireaxe materials

Currently Fireaxe is not for profit. I sell the single CDs for$5, $12 for "Food for the Gods" since it is three CDs, which coversthe production and mailing costs. For CDs sent out of the country,I'll have to charge an extra $2 per disk to cover the additional mailingcost. If you write reviews or put samples on your website I'll give you aCD for free. Since I am not making any money with the currentrecordings, you are free to make duplicates of them to distribute aslong as you obey the following guidelines:

1. You can only sell the duplications for the price of the medium or less, plus any delivery cost. You are not allowed to make any profit with the music.2. You should tell me how many copies you gave out and who got them so I can keep track. Also, if they have an e-mail address I'd like that as well so I can add them to the mailing list.3. You are likewise free to adorn any webpages or duplications with the gifs and jpgs on my website as long as you include an obvious link back to my website. This includes putting Fireaxe song samples on your site as well.4. You are free to play any Fireaxe songs (in unaltered form) provided you are an unsigned band without a marketing tie-in. You are not allowed to record those songs onto anything that you will sell.5. You are food for the gods.6. You are required to crank the song "Hounds of Tindalos" as loud as you can as often as you can. It’s your only defense against THEM. Be warned, they come through angles. Note that the CD is round. Are your speaker cabinets square?7. Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, Hastur the Unspeakable, and all other mythos creatures are purely the inventions of Lovecraft and other fiction authors. None of it is real, at least that’s what I’m going to say in court if you try to sue me for destruction of your property, house, city, or soul as a result of listening to the “Lovecraftian Nightmares” CD too much.8. You are free to play "The Rack" in school or church or any other institution bent on crushing your will and turning you into a mindless zombie slave of the corporate dominated world. Try not to develop a bad attitude about it.9. You are not free to commit suicide while listening to any Fireaxe song. I'm sorry, I'll have to prosecute. On a serious note, if you are thinking about doing it, please e-mail or call me if you have no one else to talk to. When I was in my teens the album "The Wall" by Pink Floyd used to really get to me. Just hearing songs like "Comfortably Numb", and "Hey You" would get me pretty depressed and mildly suicidal. I'm just trying to say that I've been there. If my music is having that effect on you, please get in touch. You aren't alone.

The gist of it is that you can do just about anything with themusic as long as you don't profit from it and that I get some sort ofcredit for having written it. I'm open to any methods of distributingmy music, such as compilation tapes or CDs, radio play, or recordinglabel distribution. However, you will need my direct permission todo so or some kind of legal agreement.

Ending Comments

Any comments or questions are welcome. If anyone has anyupdates on their projects, I'd like to hear from you. I know thereare a few people out there working on some cool things that I haven'theard from in a while. Drop me an e-mail regarding how you'regetting along.

Brian

--"Another hungry god tries to devour the earth. Its followers more voracious than the last, Both sides push each other to a more brutal extreme. And in the wars and resistance the suffering festers and grows. The gods promise salvation, but none can deliver for long. And when the suffering becomes unbearable life goes for naught."

"Let us review. Heavy Metal in your music collections, good. Heavy metals in your safe deposit box, good. Heavy metals in your food, water, and bloodstream, bad, very, very bad. Now, it would seem to be reasonable to retaliate against those who put heavy metals into our bodies by putting some heavy metals into theirs but I'm told that this is illegal, unless of course you're the vice-president." - a KTLB special report on the real dangers of Heavy Metal

Fireaxe shattered commercial radio's glass ceiling andstampeded through the payola patio this year by finding a new wayto get music from "Food for the Gods" and other Fireaxe CDs playedon the airwaves. The trick? Fireaxe founder Brian Voth became aradio talk show host. After being bitten by a rabid wombat and forciblydeprived of balanced news sources for a month, which is the industrystandard procedure for training new pundits, Brian was ready for hisfirst broadcast. Reproduced here in "The Lukewarm Butterknife" is thetranscript from his first show. Play the music as you're reading if youwant a more complete experience. A big "Hello" to anyone receiving the Lukewarm Butterknifefor the first time. If your "Hello" feels to be too big after a close self-examination, or you are having trouble issuing a big "Hello" to yourfriends and family and it is causing embarrassment, you might besuffering from EGS, or "Enlarged Greeting Syndrome". Please contactyour doctor, but instead of asking him his opinion about your condition,immediately demand that he prescribe U-Rapture, the latest drugavailable from Pfireaxe. Free yourself from the dreadful embarrassmentof EGS with U-Rapture, the natural way to better health. Warning, sideeffects of U-Rapture may include dizziness, nausea, hearing loss, suddenloss of interest in popular music, heart palpitations, 'air-guitar' styleepilepsy, high blood pressure, atheism, and violent outbursts (fromparents and neighbors). Repeated exposure can result in partial orcomplete immunity to bullshit. Increase the dosage as necessary. Godsshould not take U-Rapture as it is known to cause spontaneous divinecombustion. As you may have guessed, this is the official parody of theFireaxe newsletter.

"Secrets man was not meant to know" - Transcript of the first KTLB show

Musical Interlude: "I wish that someone would come along and set thingsright." <Church organ plays loudly in the background, fades into…>

Brian: Welcome to KTLB. I'm your host Brian Voth and this week, likeevery other week and every other radio talk show host, I AM OUTRAGED!

Paid Sycophant: What's this week's outrage, Brian?

Brian: Excuse me, I was pausing for dramatic effect. That's one of thosetalk radio tricks, it's called the "Paul Harvey Pause"…

Paid Sycophant: Oh, sorry.

Brian: That was another one…

Paid Sycophant: Damn. Oh, was that…?

Brian: Yes. And you know what that means.

Sound Effects: "You're Fired!" - spoken by Donald "The Donald"Trump followed by the whining of a young man insulting theegotist's ridiculous hairdo.

Brian: And if you're new to the show, yes, we really did fire him.That's our shtick and we're shticking to it. Anyway, as I was saying,the "Paul Harvey pause" is used to focus the audience's attention onwhat you're saying, thus adding tension and interest to a story thatin reality is either pretty mundane or outright boring. And that…

Brian …of that crap. Another trick that we use here in the radio bizare voice effects to make my voice sound deep and rich. That gives itan authoritative tone that people will unquestioningly believe no matterwhat kind of gibberish comes out of my mouth. It's simple, but it works.Honest. I'll demonstrate by browbeating the next caller like your typicalright wing wacko. And I'll use another trick known as "focusing in onsomething where I'm undeniably right no matter what the argument isreally about". Ready? Okay. First caller. Hello, you are on the airwith Fireaxe.

Caller number 1: Hello, Brian? I was looking for some mp3s…

Brian: You mean stealing. That's what that is. Stealing food fromout of the mouths of starving artists and bankrupt record executives.Stealing is what you were doing. Oh, but it's all just harmless fun toyou isn't it? You're not breaking the law, you're sticking it to the man.Right, sticking it to your favorite bands is more like it. How do youexpect them to keep making music if you steal it from them?

Caller Number 1: Uh, don't the record companies screw the artistsanyway, no matter what sales are like?

Brian: No, no, no! You're wrong! You're a liar and you're a thief.You're no better than a shoplifter or a former Bush policy advisor.Just tell me one thing, just one thing, are you paying for the songsthat you download?

Caller Number 1: Well, I…

Brian: ARE YOU PAYING FOR THE SONGS?!

Caller Number 1: Um, no, but…

Brian: So there. You admit it. You're a thief. I win. Ha ha ha.

Caller Number 1: But I was looking for Fireaxe mp3s. Aren'tthose free?

Brian: Hang up on him! Hang up on him! <Brian's voice can beheard in the background> Look, when I've won the argument, cutthe caller off. Do you understand me? When I say "I win" I've won.How do you expect me to be a pundit if…wait, are we still on? Cut!Cut!

<Commercial break>

Musical Interlude: "The Failures of the Fathers! The lies of the priests.The Failures of the Fathers! Betrayals of the leaders…"

Brian: Okay, we're back. As I was saying before we experienced sometechnical difficulties, there are a lot of these little things that workwonders for your credibility that anyone can learn. Simple speakingtechniques like voice roll and rhythm can turn you from just anotheropinionated whiner into a charismatic ideologue with a cult following.Just watch the "Colbert Report" and you'll get the idea.

Paid Silly Broad: Woohoo! Colbert is way hot! I would so do him.

Brian: Ahem. Miss, that's not nearly loose enough. You're a womanon a talk radio show targeted at guys. Now ditch the self-respect andtry again.

Paid Silly Broad: I mean, I'd love to go all Monica Lewinsky on him.He can stain my dress any time.

Brian: Much better. Let's go to the next caller. Hello, you are on theair with Fireaxe.

Caller Number 2: Hey, Fireaxe dude! I've been reading a lot aboutconspiracy theories on the internet and I was wanting to know whatyou thought about the one about how Israel and AIPAC are controllingcongress and making us fight for their interests.

Brian: Good question. You know, with the advent of the internet alot of people are getting exposed to all sorts of conspiracy theoriesand many of them can seem very reasonable provided you don't goto any sites which hold contrary views. Now in this case there'sno doubt that AIPAC is a powerful pro-Israeli lobbying group whichhad several spies as members who were caught stealing highlyclassified documents. And it's true that AIPAC appears to exertsubstantial influence over a rather large number of senators andrepresentatives. And also, it does seem like current U.S. policy iscompletely supportive of Israel while public opinion is somewhatless so. Therefore, as the case goes, Israel controls the U.S.

Caller Number 2: Yeah, that's what I was thinking when…

Brian: Now what have I been talking about with the "Paul Harveypause"? This is my radio show and I get to talk as much as I likeand about whatever I want to and cut anybody off whenever I wantto as long as my ratings stay high. Those are the rules. Now,understand that I'm not picking on you. One of the techniques ofbeing a radio talk show pundit is that on the air I always have to bein charge and that means showing people who's boss. My job is tomake you look stupid. That's how I look smart and in control, see?.In other words, I get paid to be an asshole.

Caller Number 2: Well, you're doing a good job.

Brian: Thanks. Now here's where you're being a tin foil hat wearinglunatic. First of all, it's not a conspiracy theory, it's all out in the open.Second, it's not just Israel buying votes, it's corporations, privately fundedgroups, foreign governments, basically anyone with a lot of money.U.S. taxpayers cough up two and a half trillion dollars every year andeveryone on the face of the earth wants a piece of that action. It isn'tjust AIPAC, which pries three billion dollars a year out of taxpayers'hands and gives it to Israel, it's hundreds of lobbyists all bribinggovernment officials and trying to get similar "returns" on their"investments". Now, what usually happens is that everybody gets whatthey want, except the American people of course. I mean, congress hasalready got our money so why do they need to please us? Are we goingto stop paying taxes? Ha, just try it. But that's how it works, everyoneelse gets what they want, which is usually more than the budget allows,so our noble leaders just borrow hundreds of billions more, pay off alltheir "campaign contributors", vote themselves pay raises, and patthemselves on the back for what a great job they're doing.

Paid Silly Broad: You are so right. Congress is a bunch of weasels.Everyone except the guy from my district. He's okay. The rest are losers.

Brian: Exactly. That's what everyone thinks because our congressmenlove to get out in front of reporters and talk about how outraged theyare, you know, they pretend that they're Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. SmithGoes to Washington". They say that they're fighting the good fight andhow everyone else is a corrupt bastard, and so when we see our guy ontelevision we say, "Give 'em hell!", but when they go back to work,it's just sleaze as usual. Check their voting records and you'll see thetruth. It’s all about pork, payback, and partisan politics. It's a scam.But it really doesn't matter what we think of them. They don't care.You see, these congress-scum are allowed to draw their own districts,or at least their fellow party loyalists do. Yeah, you heard that right,our "elected officials" get to decide who gets to vote for them. Honest.Now if they're really bold, they can do what the Republicans did inTexas, which is where they redraw the districts in such a way that oneparty gains a lot of seats in congress. That's called gerrymanderingand it's supposed to be illegal, but the only thing that happens is that itmakes the other party really mad. So what both parties usually do iscompromise. They redraw the districts so that about half of them areheavily pro-democrat and the other half are heavily pro-republican.What that means is that each member of congress runs basicallyunopposed in their district year after year. And third parties? Theydon't have a prayer of winning. That's why our "professional"representatives get re-elected at a rate in the high ninety percents.Think about it. If you don't like your congressman who are you goingto vote for? The guy from the other party? Hardly. You have noreal choice. And the wheels of campaign finance make the point allbut moot. You have one guy representing the party of most of thedistrict with name recognition and oodles of cash running againstsomeone from the minority party with no name and no money. Aboutthe only way that someone can lose their seat is if they get caught ina scandal, and even then he will usually just be replaced with anothercandidate hand-picked by the ruling party of the disgraced politician.We need to face the facts that our democracy is broken.

Caller Number 2: Woah, dude. I was going to ask you about thevoting machines too.

Brian: They're easily rigged, that much is clear, but they're not thebig issue, so let me answer your first question completely. The forcecontrolling our government isn't AIPAC or lobbyists or scumbagcampaign managers. The force that's running out of control in ourgovernment and pretty much everywhere else is greedy people. Now,I'm not talking about a few obvious examples, I'm talking about justabout everybody. Everyone wants more than they already have. Therich want to be richer, the powerful want more power, and everybodyelse wants a bigger piece of the action. Enough just isn't enough. Anda lot of people feel that it isn't enough that they succeed, but that othersmust fail too. Everything becomes a battleground and politics is wherea lot of those battles are fought. Now, these days the rich and the powerfulare well represented by both parties, and they're been winning handily.I'll explain how. We all know that war is a great way to stick it to thepoor and the middle classed. Wars are treated as big emergencies andall the programs that would normally benefit the rest of us have to beput on hold while huge amounts of cash are shoveled into the bankaccounts of people connected to the military industrial complex. Again,this isn't a conspiracy theory, it's all out in the open. Look at our history.We fight war after war after war, non-stop, and military spending isthrough the roof. Furthermore, the poor end up fighting the war sincethey have no other way to earn a living, which is adding injury to insult.And worst still, war makes the population both scared and nationalistic,so they will be more likely to surrender the power their forefathers foughtfor and gave to them, like their constitutional rights, to the governmentso that they can believe that they're better protected. So what I'm sayinghere is that Israel isn't the only beneficiary. A lot of people are makingout like bandits and it's in their best interests to keep the war wagonrolling right along. They aren't starting wars or engaging in anyconspiracies, they're just whispering in politicians ears that war is goodfor America and what's good for America is good for them, wink wink.Got it? Cool. Next caller please. Hello, you are on the air with Fireaxe.

Brian: Hold that thought while I gloat for a while. <a pause herewhere finally no one says anything> Thanks. Go on.

Caller Number 3: What I was going to say was that you're good atsaying what's wrong with everything but you never say how we canfix it. How about offering some solutions?

Brian: Well, I…well… <another pause here, but not one that Briandid on purpose> You know, I think that you're right. I should offersome kind of answer to the problems that I point out. Now I'll admitthat without having all of the facts and without doing any experimentsI can only guess at something that will work, but I'm willing to give ita try.

Caller Number 3: Alright! So let's hear how you'd fix the deal withcorruption in congress.

Brian: Well, the problem is people wanting more, and there's alimited supply of everything, which is why there is so much fighting.We're all competing over the same things. So we've got too manypeople and not enough to go around. So if you rule out the wholesaleslaughter of greedy people, and I'll do so here just for the sake ofargument, I mean, it's not that it's a bad idea, it's just that it's beentried in the past at it doesn't seem to work out, so then the only othersolution is to create more things that people value. This isn’t as difficultas it sounds, I mean Alan Greenspan has already shown us the way. Onething that we can do is to print lots more money. Well we don't needto print it any more, these days money is just numbers in a computersomewhere. So whenever people feel too down or depressed we justhave the Fed Chief wave his magic wand and Presto! Everybody's bankaccount goes up**. Congratulations, you're richer, now go out and buysomething and stimulate the economy. And virtual money is just the tipof the iceberg. In addition to virtual cash we need virtual everything.We need virtual reality and we need it to be a lot more satisfying thanit already is so that people will spend even more time in the computerworld. I mean, it's already starting to happen and that's a good thing.Why? Because things aren't so limited in virtual reality, and in factsome things are actually infinite. For instance, maybe you can't havea mansion in real life, but in virtual reality you can have a mansion, ora castle or the freaking Taj Mahal if you want. The sky is the limit,just let yourself go. Plant a virtual garden and walk your virtual dogacross your own virtual ranch. Don't like the view? Change it.Push a button and presto, you live in the Himalayas, or the Bahamas,or in some wild metaphysical paradise. Drive an exotic car of yourown design to work every day, or ride a horse, or fly over fantasticvistas on virtual wings if you like. And every day can be an adventure.Be Harry Potter one day and Frodo Baggins the next. Live out youraction hero dreams and your every romantic fantasy. There is trulynothing that can't be done in virtual reality. Does it sound too easy?It doesn't have to be. The virtual world can make you work hard foreverything if you want a challenge. What if things are too hard? Noproblem. Turn down the difficulty level and reach all of your goals.And if you get bored, in a flash your entire world can transform intothe next fad that catches your interest. There's no need for a closetfull of recreational equipment that you don't use anymore. Andthere's no need for a lot of the expensive crap that clutters up yourhome. Virtual reality is fully recyclable. After all, it's just bitsspinning around on a hard drive. Welcome to the great green dreammachine.

** How this really works is that the Fed creates money in its own bankaccount and loans it to the government. More money goes into thesystem and the rich end up with most of it. But they're nice and sothey'll let you borrow some of their booty, and Presto! You're richer.Kind of.

Caller Number 3: Uh, so everyone is plugged into virtual reality allthe time? That sounds a lot like "The Matrix".

Brian: And that makes it bad? Look, I spent plenty of my youthchasing after virtual rewards and trying to complete virtual quests.It's fun and rewarding and so I know that this is what people want.We just have to make it about something more than virtual knightswhacking the crap out of virtual orcs. For instance, speaking of "TheMatrix", if you want to live out your Neo fantasies, that can happenin the virtual world too. Choosing the red pill can be just anothercomputer simulation. And think about this. How do we know thatNeo really did find "reality" when he chose to see it. Maybe what hewas really choosing was his own virtual adventure of rebellion againstthe system since that was more rewarding to him. Maybe he never leftthe matrix at all. Now, I don't want to sound like a pimp, but, virtualreality can give you anything you want. So why not go for it?

Caller Number 3: Yeah, but, it wouldn't be real.

Brian: For all intents and purposes, it would be. Look, all that realitydoes is stimulate neurons in your brain. If virtual reality can be madeto do the same thing then your brain won't know the difference. Itwon't matter to you which world you are in and there's no question inmy mind that the virtual world can be made a whole lot better than thereal one. Everything can be made more intense, more exciting, andmore satisfying, easily. Just boost the signal. And what's more is thatwe won't have to force people into the virtual world. All we have to dois just give them one taste of it and they'll want to spend their wholelives in the dream machine. And here's the real beauty of this solution,when you're in the virtual world, you're using up a lot less resourcesthan you'd be if you were trying to live out your fantasies in real life.That's the problem with reality, we're so greedy that we're sucking thelife blood out of the world. But in the virtual world you can have wealthwithout taking it from others, you can have all the sex you wantedwithout any risk of disease, and you could pretend to be the leader of theworld and conquer your enemies without real people dying trying to makeyour dream come true. So I say we create a virtual reality simulator foreveryone on the planet, lock everyone inside, and enjoy the rest of ourlives in the limitless world of virtual dreams.

Musical Interlude: "Drink deep from the source of all dreams.Feel the madness birth a new dream."

Caller Number 3: Wait, what about children? How do we survive asa species?

Brian: The answers are virtual children, and, we don't. We simplyprogram our virtual reality to make us think that we've got all of ourproblems solved. In less than one hundred years we'll be all goneand we won't care. Plus, the earth will thank us for it.

Caller Number 3: You're kidding, right?

Brian: No. Now, I just described what people tell me heaven is like.Infinite joy forever. And virtual reality can get us there, or at least asclose as we'll ever get. People live for the dream of heaven and theydie for it too, so of course people will embrace a virtual world. I meanseriously, what is religion if it isn't a primitive version of virtual reality?What, with heaven and hell and reincarnation and all of those gods andangels and demons running around, it's pretty much Diablo II withoutall the cool special effects. And what's more is that spiritual experiencesare all in the brain. We've known that since the 70's. All it takes is afew jolts of electricity in the right spots and we experience all sorts of"divine" sensations. You don't need to use drugs or go insane. If youwant to talk to your god you can easily do that in virtual reality, and itwould feel just as real as the religious experiences that the Apostle Pauland Joan of Arc had. How does that measure up to drab old reality?And no more waiting for Jesus to come, it would actually happen, invirtual reality that is. We could just whip up a Revelations simulationfor Christians and they'd be in total bliss. Think of how righteous they'dfeel watching all their favorite sinners burning forever.

Caller Number 3: Sure, but no more humans?

Brian: Well, okay, there are a few of us who don't always have to havemore, more, more, and have it now, now, now. We could live out ourlives like our ancestors did: hunting, gathering, and treating the earthwith respect. And if anyone started to build something out of stones,well, we'd just have to take them down into the secret cave and hookhim up to the dream machine. Then he could live out his pyramid andziggurat dreams to his heart's content without messing everything upfor the rest of us.

Musical Interlude: "With ziggurats so high that they will touch theclouds…"

Brian: Yeah, sure, the dream machine's not for you. <laughs> Ofcourse, we could always be less greedy, but you can't sell the urge tonot want. It's a contradiction. Next caller. Hello, you are on the airwith Fireaxe.

Caller Number 4: Hey, Brian. I was reading The Burning Blade andI wanted to know why you're such a loser.

Brian: Thanks for calling in you insipid worm. For those of you notsure of what he's talking about, in edition 9.2 of "The Burning Blade"I revealed that in my thirty-nine years on this planet that I'd only hadsexual relations with one woman. Just one. And also in that edition Idescribed her as "a woman whom no one wanted". In other words I'mone year and one woman away from being a forty year old virgin.Which, come to think of it, probably would have been better becausethat movie looked like a lot of fun for the guy. Just kidding.

Caller Number 4: <laughs> So, it's true?

Brian: It's true. Let me make a few important points first thoughbefore I try to explain why it happened. First of all, don't cry for me. From what I've seen in my thirty-nine years, my relationship with myfriend/lover was as good or better than what most people experiencein their lifetimes. We shared ten wonderful years, and a couple notso wonderful years too, but those ten years were what most peoplerefer to as the 'honeymoon period'. We had common interests andcommon views and we got along very well. The sex was fulfilling andplentiful, and I never had any desire to chase other women, ever. Tobe honest I wouldn't trade my lone relationship for a series of stormyhookups with highly desirable women. So if you haven't spent tenwonderful years with a woman, any woman, then maybe I should becalling you a loser.

Caller Number 4: Hey, banging lots of babes makes you a man.

Brian: Quantity over quality? Get serious. What makes you a man isknowing when to say no, not spewing your juices into every hole thatlets you inside. Got it? Now, I see three strong reasons for my lackof experience. The first is simply that I have standards. I stay awayfrom loose women and vulnerable women and I have no interest intrying to get laid just to get laid. What I want is a serious, long term,exclusive relationship and I'm not willing to compromise. The nexttwo reasons are far more complicated.

Caller Number 4: Let me guess, you can't get it up and you needroofies to score?

Brian: Listen up punk, and you might learn something. One of themore disturbing modern trends is something that I like to call the"Commodification Of All Things". Now, most people will agreethat something becomes a commodity when it can be purchased,for instance, mail-order brides make marriage a commodity. ButI would contend that anything that lends itself to marketplacedynamics can become a commodity, and that when the marketplacefor that thing includes a large share of all that is out there, the thingin question has essentially become a commodity, even if it isn't boughtand sold for money. What I am seeing is that, and I really don't knowa good word to describe it but I'm talking about the rush of love, sex,intimacy, and joy that comes at the beginning of a new relationship,that feeling has become a commodity.

Caller Number 4: How about calling it f@&&!^$?

Brian: Watch your language, this isn't satellite radio. Anyway, it'smore than that. It's basically that honeymoon period I referred toearlier where you feel that tingling of anticipation, you dream of anideal future with the target of your affection, you fall head over heelsin love, or lust, and everything seems to be wonderful with the world.I think that everyone would agree that it's one of the best things thatanyone can feel. So for lack of a better word, I'll just call it 'bliss'.Now in the past you'd feel bliss only a few times in your life, such asthe first time you fell in love, the first time that you had sex, umm,make that the first time that you had good sex, and you'd feel blisson your wedding day and when you had children. After that yourhoneymoon fades and being with your spouse isn't so blissful anymore.You get into the day to day grind, year in and year out, and bliss isonly a pleasant memory or something felt vicariously. In the past itseemed that people were satisfied with that, but today I think that thesituation has become dramatically different. I think that due to agrowing feeling of dissatisfaction in the general population, whichI'd refer to as a general deepening of the permanent psychologicaldeficit, people desire and even require the feeling of bliss far morestrongly and frequently than before. So when your lover or spouseno longer gives you those wonderful, blissful feelings that you long for,your relationship begins to sour and you start looking for someone newand exciting. A number of modern trends appear to bear this out, suchas the rising divorce rate, kids not waiting until they're older to haveserious relationships, adults waiting longer to get married if at all, andthe wild proliferation of infidelity. A lot of people blame the media forthese trends and they do much to sell the dream, but I think that themedia is just a reflection of our inner desires. Sex is fast and loose inmovies and on television because we love that feeling of bliss and wantto feel it vicariously as well as in real life.

Paid Silly Broad: Viva la sexual revolution!

Brian: Right. Now, in the past, and I'm speaking in general termshere, people would only play the field for a few years in high schoolor college and then pair up for life. In any given area there would bea dwindling supply of eligible men and women as people got married.This makes the less desirable people relatively more desirable andover time most people would end up getting hitched. Everyone wouldhave their moments of bliss and then they'd get on with the importantbusiness of supporting the community and raising their children.Today, we play the field for a lot more than a few years. In fact, wedon't have to stop playing the field, ever. We can keep ourselves "onthe market" for most of our youth and even well into adulthood. Andwith divorce and infidelity so commonplace people aren't necessarilyoff the market even when they are married. If you are seeking bliss,it can potentially be found anywhere with anyone at anytime and thusthe marketplace is always open, twenty-four seven. You don't haveto settle down if you don't want to and you don't have to stay marriedif it doesn't feel good anymore. You can just keep going from onelover to the next in a wide open market, living off of the current feelingof bliss for as long as it lasts. Lifelong bliss seems to be within ourgrasp. Now, like any other market you have buyers and sellers andsome sort of pricing mechanism based on desirability. Despite women'sliberation, men are still pretty much the buyers and women the sellersand because of the additional urgency placed on men by their moreactive sex drive it's basically a seller's market.

Paid Silly Broad: <in an Asian accent> They so horny. They so horny.

Brian: Exactly. Of course, some women are driven by their biologicalclock as they get older, but the general rule holds. The more desirableyou are the more buyers you attract if you’re a woman, or the more"purchasing" power you have if you're a man. Now, desirable menoften make a whole lot of purchases, and with the sexual revolution,so do desirable women. As a result, most of the action in the marketis dominated by those with greater desirability who can hook upfrequently and who have a wider choice of partners. For those withless desirability, hookups are fewer and farther between and the pickingscan be slim. Now, that's no different than in high school or college, butsince today's market never truly tightens up, the least desirable people,mostly men since the market favors women, end up on the short endof the stick for a long time, sometimes indefinitely. Think about it.Why should anyone settle for less when there are new people comingonto the market all the time? And why take yourself off the market bysettling for less and miss your chance with someone more desirable?Thus, market forces play out, bliss is bought and sold as often and aseasily as a Miami condo, and the 'poor' end up getting screwed, ornot getting screwed as the case may be.

Paid Silly Broad: So wait, you're telling me that you're one of thoseundesirables?

Brian: Thanks for that lovely visual. I'm sure that you just traumatizedhalf of my audience, and you know what that means.

Sound Effects: "You're Fired!" - spoken by "The Donald" followed bythe hissing of a young woman bragging to the egotist about how muchPlayboy is going to be paying her for doing a nude photo shoot now thatshe's famous.

Musical Interlude: "Searching for love. Searching in vain. The promiseof pleasure delivering pain. The closer we came, the more we could feel,the wounds of the past, wounds that never heal."

Brian: We're back. Let's go to the next caller. Hello, you are on the airwith Fireaxe.

Caller Number 5: Hi Brian, so what's the solution?

Brian: Not you again.

Caller Number 5: You never answered my question.

Brian: Well, I think that the whole virtual reality thing covers it prettywell. I mean, you can have a virtual lover, or more than one come tothink of it, and then it doesn't matter what the market does, you're set.

Caller Number 5: Hey, quit dodging the question. Sure virtual realityis going to be great, but what do we do in the meantime?

Brian: Okay, you got me. Here goes. In the past we've tried to go backto forcing people to pair up for life. We're basically talking about religionand guilt and shotgun weddings and everyone looking down their nosesat those home-wrecking divorcées. Repression city. Now, as much asall the lunatics on the religious right think that this will solve theproblem it never has, ever. We always end up right back where weare now where humans indulge in all the wild, promiscuous, anddeceitful sexual practices typical of Chimpanzees and Bonobos. So mysolution is to say, "Why fight it?". In fact, we should go for it. I proposethat we out-monkey our nearest relatives and turn the world into one bigsexual free-for-all.

Caller Number 5: All right!

Brian: First of all we need a fair marketplace, and that means equalityof the sexes. Now, currently men's sex drives are far more powerfulthan women's and that's what makes it a seller's market. So that is whatneeds to be fixed first. Now, the sexual revolution and its droves ofmindless boomer followers have done a good job of making womenthink that sexual promiscuity is both fun and empowering. To that Isay, praise to Ishtar!

Brief Musical Interlude: "Praise to Ishtar. She is clothed in pleasureand love."

Brian: Oh, you bet she is. Thanks to the influences of feminists andfree love advocates, millions of women are discovering their inner slut.Now this was all starting to even the playing field but then some drugcompany goes and invents Viagra and the next thing you know a wholebunch of horny old baby boomer dudes come roaring back onto themarket, messing things right back up again. Yeah, you know who theyare, these fifty-something guys who've been ogling the low-rider andthong wearing skanks that their daughters hang out with, and nowthese pharma-pimps want to relive the summer of love without all ofthat hippie crap about not trusting anyone over thirty. Thanks Pfizer,you Pfuckers. So now we need a version of Viagra for women that'stwice as strong as the male version just to try to even things out. I know,they could call it "Niagra" or something. But we'd probably have to forcewomen to take it or trick them into it. Maybe we could put it in chocolateor cheesecake or something like that. That ought to work. But when wefinally have a balance between the sexes we might stand a chance ofliving up to those ridiculous feminist ideals where women actuallypursue men and ask them out as much as men pursue women. Andif that happens then finally all us undesirable men will end up gettingsome action, even though it will generally be with undesirable women,which isn't bad at all, really.

Caller Number 5: Yeah, it sounds awesome.

Brian: I'm not done yet. Even with Niagra the market is still going tobe top heavy, with the most desirable people getting the most action,and that means that the undesirables aren't going to get enough sex.So the answer is that we need to rig the free market, and the best wayto do that is to get the government involved. Now, I'm no communistand I'm not one for quotas, but what I think would work the best is forthe government to assess a sex tax and re-distribute that money toundesirable people in the form of redeemable coupons. It's simple.The more undesirable you are the more coupons you get. Now here'sthe genius part. When anyone has sex with someone who's undesirable,they'll get a coupon as a reward, and then they'll be able to trade thatcoupon in for cold hard cash.

Caller Number 5: <laughs> So it's like prostitution in reverse?

Brian: Exactly. Think about it. You've got one person who's hard upfor cash and you've got another person who's just hard up, and bang,the problem takes care of itself. Government sponsored sex coupons.Well, we could use a catchier name. I know, fuckbucks, or justF-bucks for short.

Caller Number 5: <laughing uncontrollably>

Brian: I'm telling you, fat chicks and bald guys would rejoice. I mean,someone like me would go walking into a singles bar and all the prettyladies would turn their heads and be like, "wow, look at the huge glassesand shiny cranium on that weirdo, I'll bet that he's loaded with F-bucks".I'm telling you it would be like Las Vegas every night. And just thinkabout what a Star Trek convention or ComicCon would be like. Babecity. And hey, ladies, there would be a line of studs outside of everyCinnabon and Krispy Kreme store just waiting to lick the powderedsugar off of your lips. Just imagine the possibilities. Get ready for theNew World Or-gy.

Caller Number 5: Yeah, and there'd be lots more hot high schoolteachers going after zit-faced teens. Ch-ching!

Brian: And all perfectly legal, but only if the teacher is a woman that is.We'd still have to enforce that double-standard. But this would changeeverything. Instead of looking at ugly women and thinking "dog" or"cow", guys would be thinking "cellphone" or "iPod". I mean, we'd bestimulating the economy. Literally stimulating the economy! And itwould work, I mean, people marry for money all the time, we'd just beformalizing and subsidizing the arrangement. If you marry an uglydude or an ugly chick, you'd be set for life.

Caller Number 5: So how about this, if Jessica Simpson walked intoNASA…

Brian: It would be like she won the lottery.

Ending Comments

The solutions given above are not serious suggestions.However reasonable they may sound do not try these at home, atyour office, in your country, or anywhere, especially the thing aboutthe F-bucks as they're probably illegal. Plus, there's a serious riskof Alan Greenspan showing up at your door with his hands full offreshly printed Federal Reserve F-bucks and demanding sexualfavors from you and your neighbors. Yuck. I think that I went one hideous visual too many.Maybe. Well, let me try one more: Jessica Simpson and AlanGreenspan…uh oh, feeling queasy…and George Lucas…urp…no,still okay…on the floor and getting all nasty and sticky and… <sounds of horrendous vomiting>

But you must lie steal and cheat, in a world made of meat, and repentat the end of your life…

The Burning Blade

Fireaxe Newsletter - edition 10.4

June 1, 2007

http://www.neptune.net/~bev/Fireaxe.html

“I have taken doping. I have taken EPO." - Bjarne Riis, 1996 winner of the Tour de France, adding that he had his winner's yellow jersey in a box at home and that Tour officials were, "…welcome to come and get it."

Humans make the rules and humans break the rules. Andalthough professional sports has often been closely associated withathletes trying to game the system in order to achieve victory, theproblem of cheating, corruption, and the collapse of the system issomething that occurs in every arena from politics, to religion, tothe marketplace. To understand it in one arena is to understand iteverywhere, but merely understanding why it happens doesn't enableus humans to find a lasting solution to the problem. Nonetheless it'sa good place to start. It's not exactly clear why Bjarne confessed when he did, noFrench lab had suddenly announced that a urine sample that he'dgiven years ago contained a banned substance, but perhaps watchingthe twisted saga that is the Floyd Landis doping investigation filledhim with enough guilt to overcome the shame that came fromconfessing. Athletes are notorious for denying that they've cheated,even when the evidence is as iron clad as it can be, so his confessionis remarkable because it is so rare. In Floyd's case, the recent Tour deFrance winner was "super-human" for a day and his urine tests concurredwith that assessment, but he is desperately grasping at straws for anyangle that will let him keep his title. If he's innocent, it's a great storyof a man struggling to clear his name and sports is nothing if it isn'tabout human drama, but if he's guilty, and I see little chance that heisn't, it's a sick spectacle that makes a mockery out of professionalcycling. Nobody wants to see their heroes fall. Nobody likes findingout that their idol is a cheater. I'd like to think that Lance Armstrongis clean, after all he inspired me in my fight against cancer and histraining methods helped me to ride faster, but after seeing all of hisold rivals drop out of last year's Tour de France under the cloud of yetanother doping scandal, I have found it very hard to believe that Lancecould have beaten those riders as soundly as he did for seven years.Simply put, if his rivals had all been doping, the only way that Lancecould have beaten them riding clean is on a motorcycle. In cycling,doping gives you a huge advantage, one that genetics and workingextra hard cannot overcome. And in Major League Baseball, where the home run recordwas broken numerous times during what is being called the "steroidera", there is the ongoing pursuit of the game's most prized record bya man who had all but admitted that he has cheated. Yet when youbring all these cheaters before congress, they will lie through theirteeth and profess their innocence. A few years ago we got to witnessmen with freakishly huge biceps and who'd hit spectacularly long homeruns deny that they'd ever injected testosterone or used any bannedsubstance. It was a joke, just like the hearings where tobacco companyexecutives lied about what they knew of their product's addictive nature,and like the hearings for cabinet members, justice department officials,and of course, members of the NSA when they were brought to testify.Why do we even have public hearings anymore? Did someone everconfess to being guilty at a hearing in the past or are my only memoriesof such admissions actually recollections of movies that I've seen?Are people getting less honorable or has it always been so bad? It'shard for me to tell since I've only been alive for forty years. When most of us think of cheating, we think of a situationwhere everyone is playing by the rules except for one greedy andunscrupulous player who wants to win at all costs. This is not avery realistic scenario, but it appeals to those of us who indulge inhero worship. We want to think that the game is clean, that thesystem isn't corrupt, and that our heroes are winning through sheerwill and determination. This fits in perfectly with the "ProtestantWork Ethic" and similar notions in other ideologies that success isearned through hard work and diligence. The notion that a gameis rigged, or that cheating is widespread, not only dethrones ourheroes, but attacks the very ideologies that we hold dear. But everynow and then some brave soul tries to pull back the curtain andreveal the sordid reality behind the things that we want to believeare noble and pure. Usually those in control react by trying to killthe messenger and apply as little damage control as is necessary tomake the faithful feel good about things again, but every now andthen the messenger succeeds and a true revolution takes hold. The truth is that cheating is contagious. It's difficult ifnot impossible to catch someone cheating, but it is often the casethat the first people to realize that someone is cheating are thecheater's rivals. Sometimes they see an obvious quantum leap intheir rival's abilities that can't be explained through other means,and sometimes, if the players are on the same team, they know thattheir teammate is cheating and will simply look the other way sincethey benefit from the rule-breaking as well. But if you suspect thatsomeone else is winning by cheating and you want to win instead,you will realize that the only way for you to win is to cheat also.This type of cheating can be seen as acceptable on an ethical levelsince it can be viewed not so much as cheating, but as leveling theplaying field. Furthermore, in a very competitive field, it can be thecase that when cheating becomes widespread, the only way to competeat the highest levels is to cheat. At that point, cheating simply becomesa part of the game. You do it because you have to no matter how youfeel about it. So where are the watchdogs? Usually they are a step behind.First they need to figure out if someone is cheating, then they need tofind out how they are cheating and then they need to figure out a wayto catch that person with proof that will stand up in court. It's a cat andmouse game that has been going on in sports for decades and in societyever since the first laws were written. But there is also the case thatthe watch dogs have a conflict of interest, such as when Major LeagueBaseball revenues went way up when home runs starting flying out ofballparks, or when political parties appoint cronies into watchdogpositions where they can prosecute members of all parties. In thosecases policing can become lax, non-existent, or applied selectivelysince the watchdogs benefit as much as everyone from rule-breaking.Rules may exist on the books, but there can be an understanding thatthey will not be enforced in certain cases and thus the cheating hasspread to those who are charged with preventing it. Conflicts ofinterest can develop in every oversight position and the people incharge are only human, so corruption always tends to find a wayinto the system. So why do athletes, and so many others, cling to the storythat they aren't cheating? The logic seems clear. If everyone isdoing it then the playing field is back to being level and the winnertruly did earn his victory. It makes sense that the winner would beadamant about defending the hard work and sacrifice that were mostdefinitely a part of winning. Also, even if the accused wanted to comeclean, trying to defend one's own cheating by accusing everyone elseof cheating, especially when you have little or no proof that they didso, is doomed to fail and will make you look even worse. Andsometimes there are extenuating circumstances which make cheatingfeel ethically sound to the cheater, such as in Floyd's case, wherebonking on one stage, through no fault of his own, knocked him outof the lead and could have given him the justification to make up hislost time on the next stage by using testosterone. Before he bonked,he was going to win, and he certainly deserved to win since he wasthe best rider in the race, but fate had other plans. Life isn't fair, butcan you make it fair by cheating? And how about in Lance's case?Having a very promising career destroyed by cancer would seem toprovide a compelling reason for him to do whatever it took to getback to that competitive level and achieve what he felt he deserved.And lets not forget the influence of big money and sponsorship dealsthat come in professional sports. Sometimes it is the owners andteam managers who condone and encourage cheating as a way toimprove the bottom line and these forces could have also played arole for Bjarne, Floyd, Lance, and many others. Sure, these are onlyspeculations, but when I think about the times in my life where I bentthe rules it was in similar situations and my thinking fell along similarlines. Yeah, I've cheated. Not on anything major, like schoolor work or personal relations, but if the things that I cheated onweren't major, why did I feel the need to cheat? The truth is that Iwanted to win too much in my younger years. I blame myself formy inability to restrain my ego, and have done my best to play onthe level in the years since, but I can also point the finger at ideologieswhich honor greatness with such tempting rewards. Of course,ideologies abhor cheaters, but when ideologies imbue their followerswith such a strong sense of entitlement that a large number of themfeel that they deserve things that are only available to a few, the factthat some of them will end up cheating is inevitable. And whensomeone decide to cheat, the cheating will often spread to othersuntil it engulfs the system and corrupts the ideology. In sports, in politics, in the financial sphere, and everywhereelse it seems, we have a deep need to get what we feel we deserve andif that means that we have to cheat then we often end up changing thedefinition of what cheating really is. Often it's easy to discard therules altogether and say that "all's fair in love and war, and this isboth". Another way is to campaign to change the rules so that theypermit whatever cheating is going on. But the problem with cheatingis that it is self-defeating. In pursuit of what we must have we end updevaluing that which we treasure so much. We debauch the very systemthat we use to measure our self worth. This seeming paradox revealsthe self-destructive nature of ideologies, which need to survive in thepresent, even if it means sacrificing the future to do so. While cloudsof suspicion will follow some of our greatest heroes around for the restof their lives, there is no way to go back in time and bestow glory uponthose who should have been our heroes if the game had been playedstraight. This is the way of the world, the notorious fiends are wellknown while the unsung heroes are forgotten. Long in appearing but not forgotten is, "Eternal Devotion tothe Dark Goddess" of which all but the final track has been recordedin final form. It won't be long before the CD has entered the mixingand mastering stages, and the cover art is well on its way to completionas well. I don’t think that it will all be ready by the next edition ofThe Burning Blade at the end of July, but by then I should be close toputting the final product into your hands. I'll include another sneakpreview in two months. I appreciate your patience. A big ‘Hello’ to anyone receiving the Burning Blade for thefirst time. This is the Fireaxe newsletter.

"Black Knight" and Virginia Tech

Those of you who've been Fireaxe listeners for a long timeknow that I have more than a little amount of sympathy for the alltoo many malcontents who found no better course of action than togo on a killing spree inside the hallowed halls of their educationalinstitutions. By sympathy I of course don't mean to suggest that Iapprove of their actions in any way, but you will definitely not findme among the shrieking chorus of people excoriating these "schoolshooters" and trying to affix the most abhorrent labels next to theirnames. Indeed, it appears that the violent revenge that these killerssought resulted only in an amplification of the treatment that theyreceived before they even considered buying a gun and taking it toschool. Even in death these individuals are hated, smeared, insulted,marginalized, and shunned, the very things that they experienced foryears which compelled them to do what they did. The media spewed out the usual tripe after the latest tragedyat Virginia Tech university: focusing on the anguish of the victims'friends and family, telling tales of heroism and sacrifice, findingevidence of an unstable personality and wondering why the telltalesigns of a potential mass murderer weren't picked up on, and of coursethere were the obligatory cries for more pointless gun laws. Everynow and then some media talking head would ask a mental healthprofessional why the shooter did what he did, but their answers neverseemed to touch on the things that I saw as being critically important.Why did Seung-Hui Cho kill thirty-two people? The blame went inthe usual directions: violent video games, violent movies, psychiatricdrugs, easy access to guns, the coverage of other school shootings andthe copycat syndrome, PTSD from coverage of things like 9/11, theChallenger disaster, and the Oklahoma City bombing, speculationsthat he was sexually abused, and simply proclaiming him to bementally ill and leaving it at that. The media made him out to be amadman, and that's certainly what he became, but how he got to bethat way was left as an open question, one that needs to be answereddefinitively if any progress is to be made. I'll try to make someprogress on this issue, drawing from the Fireaxe theory and myown personal experience. The massacre at Virginia Tech is the first major schoolshooting since I wrote the song "Black Knight", which is a songabout someone who experiences alienation and persecution at thehands of others and fantasizes about putting them to death. As Iwatched the coverage I have to admit that I was a little nervous thatsome reference to Fireaxe would turn up, like a CD, mp3s on hiscomputer, or lyrics from "Black Knight" written over and over againin a notebook. But the only band that was mentioned was CollectiveSoul, and since they are neither rap or heavy metal, no one tried topin the blame on the type of music that the shooter listened to. The bulk of the song "Black Knight" comes from personalexperience, which is why I have a lot of sympathy for those who'vegone through a similar ordeal as the character in the song but endedup turning their revenge fantasies into reality. Regarding my own life,I never came close to going on a violent rampage. Although I didn'thave many friends when I was young, the ones I had, and still haveare wonderful people who make life very much worth living. Andbeing able to get good grades gave me hope that when I graduatedI would be able to prosper in the real world and leave the ridiculousjoke of high school far behind. Things worked out for me and I'mglad that I didn't sacrifice anything in exchange for petty, but perhapsgratifying, revenge, but I can't say that I didn't leave a valuable partof myself behind in the uncaring halls of my educational institutions.I learned lessons that caused me to question just about everyone andeverything at some point, which is not necessarily a good thing. Iwasn't born a cynic and a subversive, that's just how you end up whenthe system betrays you. Trust in the system is the first casualty when the bulliesselect you as someone they're going to pick on. Nothing you do canstop the abuse. If you do nothing and just take it, it just gets worse. Ifyou fight back you only get in trouble for your courageous efforts. Andthough the bully gets in trouble along with you, you get punished worse.The principal, and your parents too, will all give you that sorry lineabout how they expect better from you. Sure, the bully is a troublemaker,they say, but you're an honor student, and you shouldn't sink down to hislevel. But their words are empty and their suggestions for what youshould do are useless. You wonder if they truly care about you sincethey don't do anything to help, and you just get picked on more sincethe bully knows that if you fight back that it will hurt your future a lotmore than it will hurt his. So you're trapped, and that's just how it is,day after day, week after week, and year after year. Time travels slowwhen you're young, and things like high school and college seem to takean eternity to get through. That's just a reminder to us older folks whothink that telling someone to put up with the abuse is reasonable advice.Sure, the vast majority of people who get bullied and abused in schooldon't go on killing sprees, but that's mainly because they see the wisdomin not throwing their whole life away in an act of vengeance. In the end,most of us are left with no good options. So you keep going to schooland you keep taking abuse and hope that your psyche can endure it. Bullying is one well-known trigger, and some schools havetried to crack down on the problem, but if you dig a little deeper intothe lives of many school shooters you'll find that the absence of agirlfriend plays a far more important role. Television, books, movies,and the occasional story told by an elder mostly tend to romanticizethe high school years as being that wonderful time in your life whereyou fall in love and experience so many joyous "firsts" (your first date,your first kiss, etc.) with that special someone. Well, it doesn't happenfor everyone, and the feelings of loneliness and despair that come froma mixture of sexual desire and emotional longing is something that yousimply can't escape from. Bullies don't follow you home and mock youwhen you lie awake on weekend nights, but every time your naturaldesires are aroused by the sight of a pretty girl, and every time you tryand fail to make a good impression on one of them, you feel that holein your heart grow a little bit bigger, and it hurts worse with eachpassing day. As if the absence of love wasn't enough, a loner must endurethe even more painful experience of watching a girl who they can loveonly from a distance fall for someone else. When you have nothinga fantasy is more than just a daydream. Your fantasies of love arepowerful dreams which take away the pain of loneliness, if only in alimited way. Still, they are far better than nothing, and seeing theobject of your fantasy in someone else's arms tears away that specialdream that covers up your emotional wounds. Worse still, when yousee the object of your desires get abused, dumped, and wind up heart-broken it adds rage to that mixture of sickening emotions that roilinside of you. After all, you know in your heart that you would neverhave treated her that way if she had fallen for you. You would havecherished her like a rare jewel if she had only given you the chance.But even after her break-up the target of your unrequited love stillturns you down and finds love in the arms of another. To you itmakes no sense, and it doesn't seem fair at all. But you watch asgirl after girl passes you over only to be deceived and discarded byguys who care only about sex and little about love. Slowly but surelythe dream of finding that special someone and experiencing true,pure love, is strangled to death by lies, lust, and loneliness. Andwhen the dream dies, there is nothing left to hold back the pain. Now, some of you might answer that we all experience thosethings in high school. We all get picked on. We all get heart-ache.We all get depressed. But we are all strong enough to get throughthose times, and if someone has to go and shoot up his classmates,then it is all his fault for being weak. After all, we endured all thatstuff and we made it through just fine, so obviously there's somethingwrong with the killer. I think that people who think that way fail tounderstand the degree to which some people suffer at the hands ofothers and may be trying to wash their hands of the abuse that theyused to heap on misfits and malcontents. The Virginia Tech killer,Seung-Hui Cho, was bullied not only at his junior high school andhigh school, but he was picked on in his church group by rich kids.Honestly, in church too, where was his god then? And for years he waspicked on relentlessly. Also it wasn't that he suffered from the painfulbut short-lived heartache that comes when you break up with yoursweetheart, it was that he never had a sweetheart to begin with, ever.In the aftermath of a breakup some people moan that they will neverbe loved again, but when you have lived a life of emptiness, the ideathat you may never find someone who loves you is not just the productof a fleeting bout of depression, but a cold hard reality that grows moreprobable with each passing day. Yes, growing up is hard and oftenpainful, so much so that it can push people over the edge without anyhelp from violent images in the media, anti-depressant drugs, or thesecond amendment. The last casualty is one's faith in justice. No one can stop thebullies, no one can warm your heart, and no one truly seems to care.Everyone else seems to get what they need and some get far more thanthey deserve, but you get little or nothing. Where is justice? It issimply nowhere to be found. No god comes down to punish thosewho bullied you or abused the girl you loved from afar, and no parent,principal, authority figure, cares enough to try to set things right.There is no one there to punish the wicked, and thus there is no justicein the world. Unless, of course, you take matters into your own hands. Here are parts of Cho's manifesto, which was delivered to atelevision station after he killed the girl he loved from afar and herlover, but before he went on his killing spree. After knowing moreabout what he went through, does what he said make any more sense?

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today.But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner andgave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you haveblood on your hands that will never wash off."

"You just loved to crucify me. You loved inducing cancer in myhead, terror in my heart and ripping my soul all this time."

"You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched myconscience. You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you wereextinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspiregenerations of the weak and the defenseless people."

"Do you know what it feels like to be stood on your face and have trashshoved down your throat? Do you know what it feels like to dig yourown grave? Do you know what it feels like to have your throat slashedfrom ear to ear? Do you know what it feels like to be torched alive?Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and bleed to deathfor your amusement?"

"You have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life. Did youwant to inject as much misery in our lives because you can? Justbecause you can? You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedeswasn't enough you brats. Your golden necklaces weren't enough yousnobs. Your trust fund wasn't enough. Your vodka and your cognacweren't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren'tenough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything."

It all seems perfectly clear to me. Cho bemoans the rape ofhis purity, which comes from the feeling that he will never be ableto experience love in a pure and innocent way. He emphasizes thedegree of his suffering since he was exposed to so much and sincethat is what had consumed him. And he laments the lack of justicein the world which not only allows the rich to have so much, but whichallows them to take even more from others and leave him with whathe feels is nothing. I find his manifesto to be clear, honest, and anaccurate description of his past. The world craps on people like Choand this is how they feel inside. In my opinion the television stationdid us all a service by broadcasting Cho's manifesto. Perhapswatching it or reading it will make a few more people stop abusingothers and thus make a few less people act out in a violent and self-destructive way. Of course, I had those same hopes after Columbine. The Fireaxe theory asserts that ideology plays a role in thedevelopment of consciousness by creating a permanent sense ofinadequacy in the mind of its followers. The purpose of this stateof mind is to motivate the individual to perform tasks that benefit theideology and the ideology then rewards the individual with temporaryfeelings of increased self esteem. In this way the ideology thrives byenslaving its followers and channeling their actions towards productivepursuits, but the process of indoctrination is not always perfect andsometimes the result is a broken mind. Cho was made to feel inadequate in a number of ways. Hisparents instilled within him a sense that academic excellence was ofprimary importance and the example set by his gifted and successfulsister would have made him feel even more inadequate even thoughhe was of above average intelligence. Bullies relieve their own senseof inadequacy by picking on others, which makes those who they pickon feel even more inadequate. When you're at the bottom of the foodchain, like Cho, you have no one to pick on in turn and so that outletis closed to you. Also, ideologies instill a sense of conformity whichprompts their followers into picking on those who are different or whodo things which are not in line with what the ideology teaches. Eventhough western ideologies values individualism and freedom, they stilldemand a high degree of conformity from their members and Cho wasoutside the norm in many ways. The public humiliation of outcastsis an ideological ritual which benefits the group by instilling a senseof solidarity in the majority and encouraging conformity, but there isalways a need for someone to play the role of whipping boy and thatperson ends up getting continually picked on in order to pacify theinadequacies of the group. Lastly, Cho felt desperately inadequate in the realm of love.In the past, marriages were either arranged or social pressures forcedpeople to pair up during their teen years and stay together for life, butin modern times dating follows the rules of the free market with thosewho are more desirable getting most of the attention and those whoaren’t getting little to none. In such an environment there will bepeople who end up without someone with whom they can expresstheir most profound and personal feelings and desires. Now, onecould argue whether being trapped in a loveless marriage is worsethan being adrift in loveless loneliness, but in either case, inadequacyis instilled as a result of ideological forces and people are compelledto find other ways to satisfy their needs. There are a lot of people like Cho out there, but most ofthem endure all the hardships of growing up as an outcast. Thestrong sense of inadequacy inside them can often inspire them todo great things in order to feel adequate. When this happens it isvery beneficial to the ideology, which rewards those who make itstronger. But in some cases the hardship is too great and a personloses their faith in their ideology. They can no longer attain a senseof adequacy by following the rules of the ideology and so somethingmust give. The result is often ideological mutation on an individualscale. In Cho's case it appears that he created a new personalideology that was a hybrid between Christianity and Rambo styleaction-hero revenge. He envisioned himself blazing a path to salvationfor himself and other downtrodden souls by punishing the wicked. Given this analysis, can future outbreaks of suicidal revengebe prevented? Well, if the pressure that an ideology puts on itsmembers is decreased, it will reduce the number of people who endup cracking, like Cho, but at the same time it will reduce the amountof motivation instilled within others, which will make them less likelyto do the great things which support the ideology. Note that Seung-Hui's sister grew up in the same crucible as he did, yet she is a verysuccessful Princeton graduate. It would seem that we cannot haveone without the other. The forces that produce greatness are alsothose that produce mass murderers. Furthermore, if the forces thatproduce motivation in the population are reduced, the ideology willgrow weaker and be less able to reward those who excel, which wouldadd to the general dissatisfaction and thus add to the risk of internalstruggle and ideological mutation. This is undesirable for the ideologyand thus the reaction will generally be to increase, not decrease, thepressure during indoctrination. This was seen in the crackdown afterColumbine and is likely to be seen again after Virginia Tech. In other words, Seung-Hui Cho and his innocent victimswere, in essence, sacrificed for the greater good of the ideology.They died as the result of being part of a high pressure system ofindoctrination which not only produces the best and the brightestpeople in the world but which inevitably produces people withshattered minds and dark desires. The struggle is for a strongerideology and the victims were merely collateral damage. They arefood for the gods. I think, however, that such a conclusion is completelyunpalatable to most people, and thus the question of why thingslike Virginia Tech happen will always be left inadequately answered.

The Fireaxe theory - Outline

I. Basics - well established theories

1. Emergent systems - that complex systems can arise from theinteractions of simple things2. Natural selection - that organisms mutate, proliferate, and compete,with the "losers" becoming extinct3. Behavioral science - that neurological systems, at their core, functionaccording to the rules of conditioning4. Entropy - that within a closed system, entropy always increases,which limits the amount of transformation that can occur

II. Extensions

1. That consciousness is an emergent system: a complex system arisingin the human mind from the interaction of simple neurons.2. That civilizations are emergent systems arising from the physicalinteractions of humans whether conscious or not.3. That ideologies are emergent systems arising from the psychologicalinteractions of conscious humans4. That emergent systems follow the laws of natural selection in muchthe same way that organisms do5. That the universe is, by definition, a closed system

III. Contentions regarding consciousness

1. That consciousness is a survival advantage2. That being a member of an ideology is a survival advantage3. That making its members conscious is a necessary part of anideology's survival4. That consciousness is created by instilling within a person apermanent sense of inadequacy - in essence a state of constant fear5. That the deeper the sense of inadequacy, the stronger the personis motivated - generally to serve their ideology

IV. Contentions regarding ideological struggle

1. That ideologies fight for survival using many methods including,but not limited to, war and enslavement2. That aggression is a survival advantage3. That aggressive ideologies make members of rival ideologiesfeel afraid and inadequate which in response become more aggressive,thus creating a vicious circle4. That aggressive ideologies must continue to grow or face internalstrife as their aggressive members will feed on each other to satisfytheir needs5. That internal struggle results in ideological mutation

V. Contentions regarding the future

1. That internal strife is inevitable since the laws of entropy implythat continuous growth is not sustainable2. That the abstract bases for ideologies transcend mortality and thussuicidal aggression is not restrained by fear of death3. That ideological mutation will eventually result in the creation ofa suicidal ideology which will attempt to save the human race bydestroying it

How to order Fireaxe CDs:

Ordering Fireaxe CD's is an informal process as I am sellingthem personally out of my apartment. Simply mail me a letter whichcontains the following:

1. The names of the CDs that you want to buy.2. The address where you want the CDs sent.3. Cash, a check, or a money order for the total cost.

Here is a price list. The first number is the cost for U.S.based customers, the second is for outside the U.S. The pricesinclude shipping and handling.

Food for the Gods: $12 $14Victory or Death $5 $7Lovecraftian Nightmares $5 $7 - Sold outA Dream of Death $3 $5 - slim only - booklet out of print

Send everything to:

Brian Voth 1301 Medical Center Dr. #415 Chula Vista, CA 91911 USA

If you review CDs on a website or in a magazine, any oneof the single CDs (Not "Food for the Gods") is free of charge inexchange for the review. In this case all I need is a request bye-mail. Please send me the URL of your review site or copy of yourmagazine with the review in it when it is done. If you want toexchange CDs, tapes, or stuff of equivalent value, make theserequests via e-mail and we'll arrange a trade. The CDs come with a booklet filled with awesome art, aletter about the project, and some information about the CD whichcan also be found on the Fireaxe site. Lastly, if you want to print and distribute Fireaxe CDs Ican send you an additional CD which contains tiff files for all thebooklets, tray cards, and labels for each project. The tiff disk is freeso just say the word.

The Future

For the rest of this year and part of the next I will be recordingthe next Fireaxe CD entitled "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess".I should have it completed by the middle of 2007. The new CD will digdeep into the dark crevices of our society and our minds, pull forth themyths that we cling to and hold dear, and expose them all for whatthey are. While “A Dream of Death” explored the madness of dreams,and “Food for the Gods” described the chaos wrought upon the earthby ideologies, “Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess” will depict thepsychological enslavement of the individual in modern times. It willbe the darkest Fireaxe work ever. My goal is to deliver music to whoever wants to hear it inwhatever way is necessary. Whatever the market demands, I will supply,but I do want to avoid the mass marketing channel. Exposure is fine, butin the modern business, the substance of the music must be altered tomatch the demands of the marketplace. This would totally defeat thepurpose of why I write music in the first place. I write music because itis a way to express my emotions. What I both think and feel goes intothe songs. That is the power, Fireaxe is the channel, and any diversiondiminishes the emotive effect. Thus I try to avoid such diversions.That is how art should be.

Rights to duplicate Fireaxe materials

Currently Fireaxe is not for profit. I sell the single CDs for$5, $12 for "Food for the Gods" since it is three CDs, which coversthe production and mailing costs. For CDs sent out of the country,I'll have to charge an extra $2 per disk to cover the additional mailingcost. If you write reviews or put samples on your website I'll give you aCD for free. Since I am not making any money with the currentrecordings, you are free to make duplicates of them to distribute aslong as you obey the following guidelines:

1. You can only sell the duplications for the price of the medium or less, plus any delivery cost. You are not allowed to make any profit with the music.2. You should tell me how many copies you gave out and who got them so I can keep track. Also, if they have an e-mail address I'd like that as well so I can add them to the mailing list.3. You are likewise free to adorn any webpages or duplications with the gifs and jpgs on my website as long as you include an obvious link back to my website. This includes putting Fireaxe song samples on your site as well.4. You are free to play any Fireaxe songs (in unaltered form) provided you are an unsigned band without a marketing tie-in. You are not allowed to record those songs onto anything that you will sell.5. You are food for the gods.6. You are required to crank the song "Hounds of Tindalos" as loud as you can as often as you can. It’s your only defense against THEM. Be warned, they come through angles. Note that the CD is round. Are your speaker cabinets square?7. Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, Hastur the Unspeakable, and all other mythos creatures are purely the inventions of Lovecraft and other fiction authors. None of it is real, at least that’s what I’m going to say in court if you try to sue me for destruction of your property, house, city, or soul as a result of listening to the “Lovecraftian Nightmares” CD too much.8. You are free to play "The Rack" in school or church or any other institution bent on crushing your will and turning you into a mindless zombie slave of the corporate dominated world. Try not to develop a bad attitude about it.9. You are not free to commit suicide while listening to any Fireaxe song. I'm sorry, I'll have to prosecute. On a serious note, if you are thinking about doing it, please e-mail or call me if you have no one else to talk to. When I was in my teens the album "The Wall" by Pink Floyd used to really get to me. Just hearing songs like "Comfortably Numb", and "Hey You" would get me pretty depressed and mildly suicidal. I'm just trying to say that I've been there. If my music is having that effect on you, please get in touch. You aren't alone.

The gist of it is that you can do just about anything with themusic as long as you don't profit from it and that I get some sort ofcredit for having written it. I'm open to any methods of distributingmy music, such as compilation tapes or CDs, radio play, or recordinglabel distribution. However, you will need my direct permission todo so or some kind of legal agreement.

Ending Comments

Any comments or questions are welcome. If anyone has anyupdates on their projects, I'd like to hear from you. I know thereare a few people out there working on some cool things that I haven'theard from in a while. Drop me an e-mail regarding how you'regetting along.

Now that was a good read. I think however that you should give the will to power more study than the pseudo-Darwinian causal logic, and that you should note that "coming right back at you with hollow points" is a masculine statement in an emasculated world.

I <3 school shooters, too, not because it's how I want to go out but because they're raising the flag of "this place is fundamentally corrupt" in a way even the stumbling idiots have trouble ignoring.

“…a world in which there is one master, one sovereign---- one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making. At the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.… What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilization." - Vladimir Putin

As correct as the Russian president may be regarding theuncomfortable reality that centralized power, while often purporting tobe the defender of morality, inevitably becomes corrupted from within,his own actions in consolidating power within his ruling party put thelie to his noble sounding words. However, it would be a mistake tosimply write off Putin's observations as mere hypocrisy, as so manypundits in the west do, since they reveal a deep and uncomfortabletruth. However moral they may begin, centralized institutionswhich consolidate and exercise power will always tend towards actingin ways which expand their power base, often at the expense of theirhigh-minded ideals. Though morally repugnant, this makes perfectsense. Institutions which are the best at accumulating power willcontinue to accumulate power, beating out all of their rivals in theprocess regardless of ideals. If an institution's ideals restrain it fromthe pursuit of power, that limitation will make it less likely to obtainand hold on to power than other institutions with no such limitation.Thus, natural selection in the realm of political and social powerpromotes the growth of institutions which are unrestrained bymorality. Furthermore, if an institution can create the impressionthat it is more moral than it really is, that works to its advantage bygaining more support from the general public. The only solution to the problem of the rise of institutionswhich are solely focused on the consolidation of power is one thatPutin has used himself, one must assemble an institution which ismore powerful than any rival and use that institution to squash thoserivals before they can spread corruption. This is why it is often declaredthat a strong central government is necessary to protect the socialorder, and indeed without such an institution a nation will generallydescend into warlordism, making it vulnerable to both infighting andinvasion. However, the problem of a strong central government isthat it will eventually become corrupted, often with those in chargebeing blind to their own excesses. In the pursuit of fulfilling its dutyof defending the nation against all foes, foreign and domestic, thegovernment becomes its own worst enemy. Putin's solution on the global front is that there should be nosingle, all-powerful nation, but that power should be distributed moreevenly between two or more nations so that no nation can act withoutthe consent of a majority of the others. This system is reminiscent ofthe three-branch system of government of the United States and its setof checks and balances which were intended to ensure that corruptioncould not manifest inside the very institution which was entrusted withpreventing corruption. It's not a bad idea, preventing instability bypitting institutions or nations against each other, provided thateveryone plays by the rules and no nation or institution is able toachieve dominance over the others, but throughout history such stabilityhas never lasted for very long. Also, "stability" is a relative term sincerival institutions and nations are constantly vying for dominance andclash on numerous fronts: sometimes in the form of proxy wars,sometimes through economic competition and coercion, and all toooften in morally indefensible ways. To the second part of Putin's statement, regarding the moralbasis of modern civilization, certainly trust is at the heart of morality.Modern civilization is immensely interdependent and thus economicand political systems need to be stable and only change at a slow pacein order to support the billions of people cohabiting the planet. Whenthe needs of too many people go unfulfilled, due either to disruptions inor inadequacies of the system, their trust in that system will falter andmorality becomes a casualty. Why should one follow the rules whenthe system punishes them for it? So stability is one key for moralityprovided that the system works well for everyone. Another key is, ofcourse, justice. A single, dominant institution or nation must obey lawsand norms and must not act exclusively for its own interests and againstthose of all others. Such actions destroy trust and promote instability,which is the point that Putin was trying to make in regards to presentconditions in the world. There are obvious differences and surprising similaritiesbetween the U.S. and Russia. On one hand you have a country witha track record of being tyrannical trying to appear egalitarian and onthe other you have a country with a track record of being egalitarianacting tyrannically. Both can twist the language of their high ideals inorder to claim the moral high ground, often hypocritically criticizing eachother for offenses of which they themselves are guilty. Whether it beinterfering in elections, excesses in wars against insurgents, economicarm-twisting, and self-righteous rhetoric, the two former superpowersare using every part of their Cold War arsenals to gain power in theworld, causing death and suffering to many in the process. Deciding between them, or objectively pointing out the flawsin the behavior of these two rivals would be a simple, objective exerciseif it wasn't for the fact that morality is not an objective term. Everyideology has its own unique moral code as well as caveats that allow itto break that code when necessary. In fact, there is nothing that cannotbe justified when viewed through the prism of ideology. One only needsto present a case where an immoral act is required to prevent far greaterimmorality to turn an immoral act into a rational, pragmatic, and indeedmoral one. Most people would sacrifice one life to save a hundred, andso selling the idea of "virtuous immorality", realistic or not, is one waythat a nation can maintain the support of its power base while freeingitself from the constraints of its own ideals. Make no mistake about it, Russia and the United States arecontinuing to struggle over control of the vast energy reserves of Asiaand the Middle East. Oil is power as is natural gas and both are neededin large quantities to keep modern nations running at top speed. Theeconomic, political, and rhetorical conflicts between modern nations aresimply surrogates for, and possibly precursors to, violent and devastatingconflicts. Simply put, the words that our leaders spin are the tools of war.Whether they are doing so intentionally or not is irrelevant, if their wordshave power, they will continue to use them to garner more support fortheir position. The battleground of ideas is critical in an ideologicalstruggle. So to Putin I would say that a world with two, three, ormany masters is no more immune from the corruption that inevitablyplagues a world than one with only one master. Morality will bediscarded in the pursuit of power and hypocrisy will run rampant untilsuch a time that the world ceases to function well and the lack of trustand decency becomes intolerable. It is then that the masses will makean about face and tear down their corrupt institutions, with those "quaint"notions of accountability, responsibility, and honor becoming the traitsthat they seek and around which power is accumulated. We will likelyfight over which brand of these virtues we will rally around but in theend they will be accepted, worshipped, and finally taken for grantedonce more, opening the way for the abuse of power and trust and startingus on another cycle of social and political revolution. Such is the waythat things appear to work. Of course, I'd say the same thing to Bush,but I doubt that he would understand what I'm talking about. Speaking of things that Bush wouldn't understand, recordingfor "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess" is finished save for a fewparts which will be performed by a guest vocalist. Since the time of thelast newsletter the final track fell into place and a number of touch-upswere done. Mixing and mastering will soon begin and the artwork is inprocess, but it is all taking too long, and so, as promised, here is anothersample from the new CD. Viva la Revolucion!

A big ‘Hello’ to anyone receiving the Burning Blade for thefirst time. This is the Fireaxe newsletter.

Economics and the Fireaxe theory

"Yeah, Bernanke. Another baby-boomer mush head screwing upa perfectly good system of transferring wealth from the middleclass to the investors. I mean seriously. Enough with the boomersalready! They're incompetent! They can't win wars, they can't rigthe stock market, and they sure as heck can't stand a little Gen Xcompetition on the internet."

- The Lukewarm Butterknife - Tenth Edition

Ben! Ben! I was joking, Ben! Honest! For those of you who have been following the rise andfall of the global markets you might have noticed that after I sentout the April Fool's Edition of the Burning Blade this year that themarkets lurched upwards faster than Alberto Contador on steroids.And if you're following the independent tracking of the M3 measureof money in the United States you know that while the measure wasgoing up at 7.6% before the Fed stopped reporting it, that it has beengoing up by over 13% for most of this year. Contrary to how Iportrayed things in the humorous version of this newsletter, BenBernanke has been hard at work pumping up the stock market andwith the exception of the last two weeks, he's done a heckuva job. Of course, my savings account is getting a meager 4%interest, which, if you subtract the inflation in M3, is actually losingmoney at a nine percent clip against the growth of the money supply.&#%@!! Somebody call the cops! I'm getting robbed! Back to being serious. Sure, money is important, you mightsay, but I feel that many of you out there are wondering why I discusseconomics fairly often in the Burning Blade. I can sympathize. It'sa boring subject that most of us take for granted and ignore. Afterall, for almost everyone alive on the planet, their money has alwaysbeen good and has always lost only a little bit of its value each year.There's no reason to think that will change. And furthermore, tofocus on money beyond that which you need to get by at an acceptablestandard of living is often taken as a sign of greed. I always usedto think that money matters were the exclusive realm of accountantsand money-hungry MBAs, but the more that I examine the worldthrough the prism of the Fireaxe perspective the more that I realizethat economic systems are part and parcel of ideologies and that onecannot understand politics, religion, and how people get along witheach other without knowing how modern economics works. In ancient times, religion was the law. There was noseparation of church and state. Thus, in various religious textsyou will find laws governing property rights and the repayment ofdebts right alongside laws dictating how witches are to be dealt withand the proper way to worship one's god. Usury for example, usuallydefined as charging excessive interest, is regarded as a sin in mostreligions. But in modern times, where religion's power to enforce thelaw has been taken over by secular and pluralist ideologies, andwhere advances in mathematics and communications have madeeconomic systems vast and complex, economics has risen up tobecome an extremely powerful force in the world, one that ideologiesmust account for and control. Furthermore, economics has becomeso powerful that it has even had more than a minor influence onideological thought. Like it or not, modern civilization has deprived us of ourindependence and ensnared us in a vast network of inter-dependence.Almost everything we need is brought to us through that networkwhich relies on a multitude of logistical, contractual, and financialrelationships to function properly. Most of us are far away fromanything resembling subsistence farming and we rely heavily uponthe network to support us. This can be seen in any area where warbreaks out or a disaster takes place. The support system breaks downand instantly there is a humanitarian crisis which needs both immediateattention and long term planning to resolve. Without assistance, thecrisis will quickly devolve into immorality and anarchy as desperationoverrides social conscience. We need the system to work, and therules which the system follows are governed by economics. The economic system, through market forces and regulation,satisfies our physical needs, but more importantly from an ideologicalstandpoint, it influences our role in society and determines, to a largedegree, our sense of self worth. Most of us have jobs, and our jobs havea certain income which is determined by the economic system. Ourincome is the primary determinant of the lifestyle we lead, whetherwe can afford luxuries or we struggle to get by. Our incomes alsoconvey status which has far-reaching social repercussions. The richhave far more opportunities than the poor beyond merely their abilityto buy more and better things. These are things we all know andaccept, but does income really translate into a sense of self-worth? The answer is yes, but not entirely of course. A person'splace in society is determined by a number of things: how they treatothers, how honorable they act, and how wise they are, but also bywhat they do for a living. The whole of society benefits when eachindividual contributes to the system in some way and thus it is vitalthat the system reward individuals for their contributions to keep themworking to support it. But while non-monetary contributions andrewards are important, they cannot replace economic ones, and soprofessions and incomes are a vital part of the social order. In modern times the importance of a functional economicsystem has grown as the importance of family and social ties havediminished. Sons seldom follow in their father's footsteps and takeover the family business anymore and seeking employment via familialconnections is frowned upon in modern, merit based societies. Todaymost people are expected to find their own way in the world, choosingpaths that can be quite different than the ones which their parents took,and prospering by doing good, professional work. Thus, it is no longerthe community which is expected to take care of individuals, but ratherthe economic system, which provides opportunities and rewards hardwork. Being able to hold a job is a rite of passage in modern society.It represents an individual's coming of age. It shows that they areresponsible members of society. It gives them a feeling of self-worthand rewards them with money, which imparts no small amount offreedom along with it. Earning money translates into independence,provided that you earn enough of it to get by at the standard of livingthat you are comfortable with. But when you achieve that goal youfeel like you are a part of a larger whole, like you're earning your keep. As a part of the community most people take an interest inmaking sure that their town, state, and nation is the best that it can be.They identify with their community and take pride in it. They supporttheir community and it supports them and everything is as is should be. At least, that's the way it's supposed to work. But an economic systemis just like any other system created and maintained by humans, it isn'tperfect, and it is vulnerable to dysfunction and corruption. One of themost common dysfunctions of an economic system is the misallocationof resources, which is a fancy way of saying that too much money getsspent on things from which too few people benefit. Market basedsystems are supposed to work against such misallocation but themarkets often fall victim to manipulation and herd mentality. Whenthe economic system becomes dysfunctional, it has the collateraleffect of eroding the self-worth of those who are not benefiting asmuch from their labors as they should be. An economic system whichhas high unemployment, or which forces people to work at jobswhich are below their level of talent or expertise, or prevents toomany people from realizing their potential, or deprives people of thethings that they need, is one that disrupts the connection between theindividual and the community. When the system treats someone poorlyand unfairly, that person will find fewer and fewer reasons to supportthe community in return. They will cease to identify strongly with theircommunity and regard it with contempt, anger, or simply not caremuch about it at all. They may turn to crime, drug use, or otheranti-social behaviors which hurt the community and the economy.One can argue that having a functional economy is the foundationof any community, of equal or perhaps greater value than religionor a political system, since immorality and intransigence will resultwhen the economy does not work for all. Preachers can preach andpoliticians can make promises, but if neither can put food on thetable then their words will not find the ears of the masses. If thebad times persist, revolution becomes inevitable. Thus, modern ideologies, such as Democracy, Communismand Fascism, must incorporate methods of managing or controllingthe economy of a nation so that dysfunction is prevented and revolutionis avoided. Economics is too important a factor in a post industrialsociety to leave unattended. But economics is more than just a wayof managing limited resources. Economics reflects and influencesthe values of a society. Communism is focused on both social andeconomic equality which requires a totalitarian government to ensurethat economic inequalities do not occur. Democracy is focused onfreedom and independence and regulates the economy as little aspossible, allowing market forces to determine merit. Fascism seeksa middle way between the two, allowing the government to have farreaching powers to prevent dysfunction but still allowing enougheconomic freedom to reward those who perform the best. All threeideologies seek to manipulate the economy so that it reflects theirbasic ideals regarding a person's relationships with other individuals,the community, and the state, but as long as people have at least somefreedom on how to spend their money the economic system within anyideology will tend to shift and change. Sometimes these changes willresult in a less productive economy which the state needs to step in andcorrect, and sometimes these changes will result in a more productiveeconomy that can force a change in the laws of the state and evenin the ideology itself. A perfect example of this is China, wherethe recent opening up of the economy of the communist state hasresulted in massive changes in both the economic and social orderand left over a billion people confused about what ideology theyare actually following. Is it Capitalism? Communism? Some oddmixture of the two? The Chinese government is trying to stayin control of the economy, but it is finding it difficult to reign inthe ravenous beast without causing bigger problems in the process.Indeed, a nation's economy can be like a frisky young stallion,sometimes it goes where the rider tells it to go and sometimes it justgoes where it wants to go. No ideology has solved the problem of how to prevent aneconomy from becoming dysfunctional. This is due to the fact that thefalsehoods that make up ideologies permeate their economic systems.I've discussed ideological falsehoods in editions 8.6 and 9.6 of theBurning Blade. Those essays can be summarized by stating thatideologies must provide powerful incentives in the form of futuregains in order to motivate their believers. In economic terms thismeans that ideologies must deliver increasing growth in economicmeasures such as income and gross domestic product. These numbersare used as proof that things are getting better and can be used tomaintain the faith of people who are not personally doing well byshowing them that the overall economy is expanding and that goodtimes will be heading their way soon. A functional economy generally grows at a steady pace overtime due to innovation, increases in productivity, and populationgrowth. While this progress is encouraging, the main focus of a nationis not on absolute gains, but on relative gains against its rivals. If yournation grows at a 5% rate but the average gain worldwide is 8%, thenyour nation has actually declined 3% relative to all others. Not onlydoes this represent a loss in a nation's power and influence but it bringsinto question the competence of the government and even the efficacyof the ideology. No one wants to see their nation go into decline, evenin relative terms. Such a thing makes a nation more vulnerable toforeign interference, in both economic and military terms, and doubtsare cast on the beliefs of the people that their nation's ideology is trulysuperior and that it will eventually achieve global dominance or at leastlast a very long time. If your nation grows at an above average rate, orhigher, all is well, but for those nations which are below average, theirpopulations will believe that something is wrong. For those unfortunatenations the fault must be placed somewhere, such as on the unfairpractices of a rival, the poor performance of the government, or in theflaws in one's ideology. Of these the easiest for people to accept is thatthe fault lies outside one's own nation. However, blaming the government,especially the members of the "other" political party, is also quite popular. The central problem is that while not all nations can grow at anabove average rate, all are expected to do so (an inherent property ofideologies), and the populations of some nations demand that their nationbe the best every year. These unrealistic expectations cannot be met byall nations, and so many seek ways to make it appear that their nation isdoing well despite the truth that it is not. Fudging the numbers is one ofthe best ways to create growth out of nothing, such as getting creativewith inflation figures so that it is much lower than it really is. Sinceall economic statistics are compared against inflation, making inflationseem low makes everyone seem richer, especially when money is beingborrowed or printed at an exceptional rate. Making credit more availableis another way of making people seem richer than they are. This allowspeople to borrow more of their future gains for enjoyment in the present,but if the risk of defaults is not adequately accounted for this guaranteeseconomic shocks down the road as promises fail to be delivered upon anddreams crash to the ground. Both of these gimmicks represent moral failings in the realm ofeconomics. One is simply bald-faced lying and the other is yielding totemptation. The problem with these types of moral failings is that theysolve problems in the present at the expense of causing greater problemsin the future. This presents a moral dilemma. If your focus is on survivalin the long term, allowing such moral failures to occur is unacceptable,but if short term survival is of the utmost importance, then these moralfailings are not only tolerated but encouraged. In democratic systems,where politicians must be reelected at frequent intervals and where manyof them do not serve for long terms, one would expect to see politiciansaccepting economic malfeasance as being vital to their careers. This isnot to say that democracies are uniquely vulnerable to economicmalfeasance as the leaders of all nations must show economic growthor be called to answer for the decline. No one wants to be the one stopsthe printing press and calls for restraint. Politicians who tell the peoplethat everyone is going to have to suffer through some bad times while arecession runs its course are seldom popular and rarely remain in office.So there is an extreme temptation to indulge in immoral economicpractices to meet the demands of the present and let someone else dealwith the consequences. Of course, after this process has been repeateda number of times, and the future consequences of past bad decisionshave grown to epic proportions, it becomes more and more importantto a nation's leaders to push the bad times off just a little farther so thatthey occur on someone else's watch. No one wants to appear responsiblefor bringing down an economic house of cards. So higher and higher itgoes. But once the tools are in place to make the economy of a nationappear to be stronger than it is, dysfunction in the economy can flourishwith the general population being none the wiser. If growth appears tobe strong and everyone feels richer, the balance of how economic rewardsare distributed throughout society can become extremely skewed withoutthe people realizing that they are becoming effectively poorer. Whileone's income may appear to be going up as fast as the reported amountof inflation, the real rate of inflation will eat away at one's income,degrading one's standard of living making it difficult to bargain forbetter raises since their bosses will just point to the government'sfigures as proof that the raises they have given are fair. To make endsmeet many people often have to turn to borrowing to get by. Borrowingjust adds another drain on one's income and can only be considered ashort term solution, but for those who need the money there is noalternative. Like their governments, they push their problems off tothe future and hope that it will all turn out for the better. Also, thegovernment's unemployment statistics can appear to be quite low, butnot indicate that the high paying jobs are being moved overseas andreplaced by lower paying ones. Slowly but surely wealth gets transferredfrom the masses to the rich while the widely reported economic statisticstell a story of growth and prosperity. The result of all this is moral decay, both in economic termsand in social terms. The immorality on Wall Street is frightful, withthe global marketplace appearing to be more and more like one giganticPonzi scheme teetering on its last legs. Greed has run unchecked fordecades and the world has collectively borrowed deeply into a futurethat has no chance of being realized. Unfortunately the powers thatbe continue to kick the problem down the road with many of themrefusing to believe that a problem even exists at all. After all, thesystem hasn't crashed yet, maybe it will all work out. But moreimportantly is the moral decay on Main Street. Here I'm not referringto gay marriage, flag burning, nudity and profanity in popular culture,or abortion rights which are moral issues in name only. The true moraldecline in a nation is rooted in the bond created between individualsand their communities through economic contributions and rewards.When standards of living decline and needs go unmet it's no surpriseto see people caring less and less about their nation and the law.When the promise of good employment after attaining a degree inhigher education evaporates and only far less palatable opportunitiesremain it's hard to keep believing in the work ethic. Gambling, incasinos, public lotteries, and the stock market becomes endemic aspeople strive for that lucky strike which will allow them to lead thekind of life that the economic system denies them. Certainly a fewindividuals can prosper, even in the worst conditions, through hardwork and taking initiative, but if the system does not work for themajority of people there will be breakdowns in morality across theboard. When people lose their self respect they will not respectothers. When people lose their sense of self worth they will treatothers as if they were worthless. Relations of every stripe breakdown, not just economic ones, and trust is replaced with lying,cheating, and doing whatever it takes to get what you want or need. Moral decay also occurs among those who are rewardedhandsomely by the system, particularly when wealth and incomecome too easily. It is common for the rich and powerful to lose theirrespect or concern for the community since treating others well canbecome irrelevant to their well being. Also, those obsessed withaccumulating power and wealth, who generally obey few or no morals,prosper in environments where economic malfeasance is rampant.When immoral people become powerful, they open the door for furtherimmorality. Cheating is contagious. And once an economy beginsto become dysfunctional, moral decay on both the rich and poor endsof the spectrum tend to push the system towards more dysfunctionrather than righting the ship. It's not inevitable that the systemproceeds to a complete calamity though. One solution for severalnations has been to elect what is essentially a dictator, someone whoseizes power with the goal of correcting the system, such as Putinhas done or as F.D.R. and Hitler did during the 1930s. Of course,such a solution has potentially serious repercussions. Thus, economics is important, both to the Fireaxe theory andto people in general since it controls our fates more than we realize.Taking it for granted is a mistake as it does not always function inan honest manner, and leaving it in the hands of the politicians, thewealthy, and the herds of investors has always ensured dysfunctionand the eventual breakdown of the system. In the end we all suffer,not just the rich, the powerful, and those who owns stocks and bonds,but everyone who is a part of the economic network, so it's necessarythat we all make sure that problems are stopped before they grow toepic proportions. Unfortunately, this time around it appears that I,and many others, are too late.

The Fireaxe theory - Outline

I. Basics - well established theories

1. Emergent systems - that complex systems can arise from theinteractions of simple things2. Natural selection - that organisms mutate, proliferate, and compete,with the "losers" becoming extinct3. Behavioral science - that neurological systems, at their core, functionaccording to the rules of conditioning4. Entropy - that within a closed system, entropy always increases,which limits the amount of transformation that can occur

II. Extensions

1. That consciousness is an emergent system: a complex system arisingin the human mind from the interaction of simple neurons.2. That civilizations are emergent systems arising from the physicalinteractions of humans whether conscious or not.3. That ideologies are emergent systems arising from the psychologicalinteractions of conscious humans4. That emergent systems follow the laws of natural selection in muchthe same way that organisms do5. That the universe is, by definition, a closed system

III. Contentions regarding consciousness

1. That consciousness is a survival advantage2. That being a member of an ideology is a survival advantage3. That making its members conscious is a necessary part of anideology's survival4. That consciousness is created by instilling within a person apermanent sense of inadequacy - in essence a state of constant fear5. That the deeper the sense of inadequacy, the stronger the personis motivated - generally to serve their ideology

IV. Contentions regarding ideological struggle

1. That ideologies fight for survival using many methods including,but not limited to, war and enslavement2. That aggression is a survival advantage3. That aggressive ideologies make members of rival ideologiesfeel afraid and inadequate which in response become more aggressive,thus creating a vicious circle4. That aggressive ideologies must continue to grow or face internalstrife as their aggressive members will feed on each other to satisfytheir needs5. That internal struggle results in ideological mutation

V. Contentions regarding the future

1. That internal strife is inevitable since the laws of entropy implythat continuous growth is not sustainable2. That the abstract bases for ideologies transcend mortality and thussuicidal aggression is not restrained by fear of death3. That ideological mutation will eventually result in the creation ofa suicidal ideology which will attempt to save the human race bydestroying it

How to order Fireaxe CDs:

Ordering Fireaxe CD's is an informal process as I am sellingthem personally out of my apartment. Simply mail me a letter whichcontains the following:

1. The names of the CDs that you want to buy.2. The address where you want the CDs sent.3. Cash, a check, or a money order for the total cost.

Here is a price list. The first number is the cost for U.S.based customers, the second is for outside the U.S. The pricesinclude shipping and handling.

Food for the Gods: $12 $14Victory or Death $5 $7Lovecraftian Nightmares $5 $7 - Sold outA Dream of Death $3 $5 - slim only - booklet out of print

Send everything to:

Brian Voth 1301 Medical Center Dr. #415 Chula Vista, CA 91911 USA

If you review CDs on a website or in a magazine, any oneof the single CDs (Not "Food for the Gods") is free of charge inexchange for the review. In this case all I need is a request bye-mail. Please send me the URL of your review site or copy of yourmagazine with the review in it when it is done. If you want toexchange CDs, tapes, or stuff of equivalent value, make theserequests via e-mail and we'll arrange a trade. The CDs come with a booklet filled with awesome art, aletter about the project, and some information about the CD whichcan also be found on the Fireaxe site. Lastly, if you want to print and distribute Fireaxe CDs Ican send you an additional CD which contains tiff files for all thebooklets, tray cards, and labels for each project. The tiff disk is freeso just say the word.

"In Indian mythology, we are in the Age of Kali - the last age. The world ends when Kali dances the dance of death. There are no such clear markers in markets. Recently, we came close - Jim Cramer, a CNBC pundit, launched a 'we’re in Armageddon' tirade on air. Embattled Bear Stearns’ CFO Samuel Molinaro pleaded: 'I’ve been out here for 22 years, and this is as bad as I’ve seen it in the fixed-income markets.' Kali had begun to shake her booty. The credit bubble was finally deflating." - Satyajit Das

The writing is on the wall. The emperor has no clothes. Themountain of strength and power that is Wall Street has been revealedto be an illusion: a computer generated image of a thing that existsonly in the minds of true believers. But optimism is a difficult thingto kill, especially after a decade of bullishness that was rewarded byunprecedented profits, and so the vast majority still believes what theymost want to hear: that all is well, that the Fed is in control, and thatif there is a downturn that it won't be very bad. It's a wonderful story,if only it were true. The believers can't be blamed for their optimism. After all,in every financial crisis over the last two decades or so, and there havebeen many, the depressing forecasts by "gloom and doomers" havenever materialized, at least in the United States. Bubbles have comeand gone, leaving only a couple of minor recessions in their wake, sohow could anyone believe that this time will be any different? The answer is that each bursting bubble of the past was"fixed" by the creation of a bigger bubble, which allowed the debtsof the past to be rolled over into the newer schemes of the presentand future. Sure, there were always a few casualties after everybursting bubble, but the powers that be are very adept at staying afloatwhile passing the bill on to investors and taxpayers. And even thoughthe loopholes that allowed those lucrative bubbles get plugged byregulators, new ones are found or created, and the great game ofmilking the bubble is kept going for another few years. In essencethis "serial bubble blowing" process is not much different than whenyou max-out a credit card and "solve" the problem by getting a newcredit card. You can keep doing that for as long as you can keepgetting new credit cards, but eventually you will run out of creditand the party is over. Of course, when you stiff the credit cardcompany, only you and it suffer, but in the case of bubbles, thedamage can get spread far and wide, and today that is true morethan ever. National borders and tight regulations used to isolatebursting bubbles in various nations from the rest of the globaleconomy, limiting their damage, but over the last few decades ofderegulation and globalization this is no longer the case. Loans inCalifornia can be made by banks in New York and then repackagedand sold to hedge funds in Europe and investors in Asia, which iswhy defaults in Indiana can cause firms in Germany to go under.Now with a fully integrated and loosely regulated global marketplace,bubbles can grow to monstrous proportions, infecting every cornerof the world while resisting all efforts to contain them. Such is thecase with the ravenous "credit bubble" of today, which was born inthe wake of the bursting dotcom bubble and which has no equal insize and scope in all of recorded history. It is beyond anyone's abilityto control or to fix and when it finally bursts, as it appears to be doing,the suffering will affect everyone on the face of the earth. This timethough, there appears to be no "next bubble" into which to sweep themassive fallout from the current one. The world is tapped out and thedebts are past due, but that hasn't stopped the central banks from tryingto delay the inevitable once more. It should surprise no one that the central bankers of the worldwere revealed to be hypocrites early on. The doctrine of leaving thefree markets to work things out on their own is only adhered to whenthings are going in favor of the financial giants. When the marketsdrop and the losses mount, the capitalists suddenly transform intocommunists and the invisible hand of the marketplace is shovedaside by the inflationary hand of the Federal Reserve. Their remedyis the same as always: a quick, and this time enormous, "liquidityinjection" to keep the money flowing; which, last month, served onlyto prop up a foundering system of financial malfeasance and moraldecay. After all, the central bankers cannot afford to admit that thesystem that they preside over is dysfunctional and rotted to the coreso they must do whatever they can to maintain the facade that all iswell. While it is true that central banks must act to save the markets,their jobs would have been much easier if they had exercised strictermonetary policy and tighter lending standards, nipping the bubble inthe bud at the expense of slower growth or a recession. Unfortunately,as explained in the last edition of The Burning Blade, a nation'sleaders must preside over growth and progress every year or riskbeing deposed and thus bubbles, debt, and short term solutions areencouraged, even when they come at the expense of future growth.And so as long as central bankers are appointed by politicians, thetight-fisted economists will rarely reach the top post while those thatgive speeches about fighting deflation by dropping money out ofhelicopters are fast-tracked. But those who advocate loose monetarypolicy are not necessarily scheming profiteers. In reality most havesimply embraced the ideology of Neo-liberal economics whichdownplays the negative side of running debts and championsderegulation. Many Neo-liberal true believers are convinced thatbubbles are really just signs of true economic strength and prosperityrather than problems of a loosely regulated financial market andhave put forth convincing arguments that far-above-average growthis sustainable indefinitely. They claim that the central bank's roleis essentially to nurse bubbles along rather than pop them and preventthem from recurring. It's hard to argue against them. After all, untilthe bubble bursts, the evidence is on their side, and with each moneymaking deal and trade, more converts are made to the god of eternalwealth creation. It's truly a case of the blind leading the blind: thoseblinded by ideology leading those blinded by greed. Despite how it may appear today, the crisis is far from over.It's not about a few sub-prime loans gone bad, but about the magicalcreation of trillions of dollars of housing equity through themanipulation of interest rates and the leveraging of trillions of dollarsof loans against those homes into gargantuan sums that sent everyglobal market skyrocketing. The practice of leveraging, one of manydangerous financial gimmicks that has been abused to an extreme,turns small gains into large ones, but now it is turning small lossesinto potentially fatal ones which can bring down major firms overnight.Anyone paying attention to the housing market knows that the lossesdue to foreclosures have only just begun. Rates are resetting, prices aredropping, and the economy is costing people jobs. In regards to themarketplace spasms that we've seen over the last two months, there'sa lot more where that came from, and as the collapse continues, it willpick up speed. In the past, financial collapses have played out over months,not days, and generally take more than a year to hit rock bottom. Thesedescents are neither constant nor gradual and over the period of thecollapse a number of false bottoms are reached where the markets turnupwards and everything seems to be over. But after each reboundcomes another, deeper drop, followed by another rebound and anotherdrop. Over and over the process repeats, punishing anyone who daresto invest in what seem to be bargain basement deals, until finallyequilibrium is established once more. If the collapse has truly begun,then the world will be a very different place a year from now. Verydifferent indeed. And, as usual, I'd love to be wrong about this asI'm doing well in the current financial climate, but when I see howmany of those that I care about are faring, and witness how the realityof a dysfunctional economy - not the fiction that the well knowneconomic indicators suggest - is grinding down upon them, I realizethat what we need most of all is change, even if that means sloggingthrough another Great Depression to get to better times. Speaking of impending doom, you won't have to wait toolong to hear the latest Fireaxe CD "Eternal Devotion to the DarkGoddess". The mixing is nearing completion and is gelling nicely,yielding a full, rich sound that both sounds and feels good. Also,the artwork is almost complete and it too is a healthy cut above thatwhich has been previously released. Click the link below to viewwhat you will soon see spinning around inside your CD player. Itseems that I'm getting better at this whole artist/musician/soundengineer thing.

Those are the wings of the Dark Goddess. You'll get to seeher in all her malevolent beauty in the fold-out booklet. I think thatyou will all be very pleased if not blessed (cursed?) to own it. A big ‘Hello’ to anyone receiving the Burning Blade for thefirst time. This is the Fireaxe newsletter.

Did I say "Guest Vocalist"? - Oops

In the last edition of The Burning Blade I mentioned thatI was going to have a guest vocalist sing on a few of the tracks for"Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess". That was certainly myplan, it just didn't turn out that way. There were a few parts whichI felt would sound great with a soft, feminine voice and I felt thatit wouldn't be too much of a problem to find a local singer with agreat voice who could do those parts. So I laid down the finalversions of the tracks with that in mind and then went online tolook for possible candidates to finish things up. In retrospect Ipretty much painted myself into a corner since there was no waythat I could get the tracks to work right without female vocals,that is without making some major changes to the songs anddelaying the release even more. The initial results of my search were depressing. It turnedout that the pool of women who were available for studio work wassmaller than I thought, and it got even smaller when I ruled out thosewho were simply not very good at singing. Now, I wasn't looking forthe next Celine Dion by any stretch, but they had to be able to at leastsing on key. Slowly I began to realize that my falsetto voice, one thatI used in "Lovecraftian Nightmares", sounded better than many of thesingers that I heard. That was a shock. But thanks to a little luck Ifinally found a singer who could do the parts how I wanted them doneand who sounded good doing it. I had her record a sample trackand she nailed it. Praise to Ishtar! We agreed on a fee for the workto be done and everything seemed to be coming together at last. Unfortunately, I never heard from her again. I left acouple of messages for her but got no reply. Now, I know that I'mworld class loser when it comes to women, which means that I'mvery familiar with the whole concept of women seeming to justdisappear off the face of the earth when I try to get in contact withthem. But, I mean, how big of a loser do I have to be such that Ican't even pay a woman to come to my apartment and sing a fewverses for me? Seriously. It's not like she had to let me take herout to dinner or let herself be seen with me in public or anything,and I wasn't going to force her to pose for a "band" picture if shedidn't want to. It was just a professional relationship, that's all,and not professional in the oldest profession sense either. So am Itruly so repulsive that women don't even want to be around me?Alright, I'm definitely getting carried away here. he he he I'm not certain why she didn't call me back. However, whenI think back to our negotiations I remember that she and her friendbrought up the idea of getting a piece of the profits if the CD wentbig. It was hard but I was able to keep a straight face. But when theybrought it up more than once I had to say something. I guess that theydidn't know much about Fireaxe. But I didn't want to come out and saythat I'm dedicated to not turning a profit on my music no matter howmany CDs I sell. I was afraid that they might have walked out the door.("What? You're just doing it for fun!?") So instead I explained thatnone of my previous CDs ever sold more than 120 copies and thatthere was little chance of that ever changing. They didn't seem to besatisfied with that but everything seemed fine when they left. To be honest I was willing to negotiate on a "royalty" oftwenty-five cents per CD sold after the first 200 copies if it seemedlike I needed to throw that in. In retrospect I probably should havebrought that up during our one and only meeting, but I thought thatall was well and I really didn't want any strings attached. Yep, I canread women like a book. I also remember the singer's friend telling me that the singerhad auditioned for "American Idol", that she'd made it through the firstround, and that she was waiting for the second round to start. So maybeone of you will see her on that show some day. I won't, since I don'twatch the show, but it reminded me of how far out of step what I amdoing with Fireaxe is with the rest of the music profession. Therecording industry has been all about finding the next big thing sinceas far back as I can remember and it probably all started when theBeatles achieved mage-fame. This is not to say that music was purebefore 1960 and that popular demand never influenced what musicianscomposed or played, but since that point the Rock Star image: the wildlifestyle and easy money; has been the dream that has driven many ayouth down to the local music store to buy their first guitar, microphone,or drum set. As the number of garage bands multiplied and the recordingindustry became highly profitable, music turned from being a legitimateprofession (albeit a difficult one that didn't pay well) to the equivalentof the lottery, and when the big prize is so desirable, people will do justabout anything to get it. Selling out, getting exploited, trying anythingto get your big break, etc., etc., we all know what the business hasbecome, have become far too common and in the process music wasreduced to being a means to an end, not an end in itself. Fireaxe, on the other hand, is all about the music, or morespecifically, all about the theme that I'm trying to express. The reasonthat I first picked up a guitar was that I could write songs in my headbut I didn't have the skills to play them. They were good songs, or atleast I thought so, and I wanted to be able to get them out of me so thatothers could hear them and so that I wouldn't forget them over time.Fireaxe is the result of a long journey to achieve that goal. My musicis an expression of what I want to say and what I want to play. Fireaxeis what I think and what I feel. It is nothing more and nothing less.I care nothing about becoming rich or famous and would gladly tradea platinum selling CD for profound conversations about the subjectmatter involved. I'm also not out to change the world, I'm just enjoyingthe process of creation, and creating something that I can be proud of.It's what I do. But the singer that I tried to hire didn't seem to care what theCD was about or what the meaning was behind the words that she wassinging. That was fine with me as long as she sung them, but it seemedthat all she cared about was whether singing for me would help to furtherher musical ambitions. If that was her goal then I can say that she madethe right decision. Fireaxe wasn't going to break down any barriersfor her and her time will be better spent doing something else. Butthe whole experience did serve as a disheartening reminder of howidolatry and the profit motive have perverted and perhaps destroyed aperfectly good form of art. As it is what we call music these days is theartistic equivalent of advertisements since they essentially both servethe same purpose. Both try to shock you, surprise you, titillate you, ordo whatever it takes to grab your attention and then they attempt tostick a catchy tune or clever slogan in your head so that you'll rememberthem and feel compelled to buy the product that they're selling. Ofcourse, it's not just music that has suffered from this disease. Movies,television shows, video games, and other forms of "content" havemerged with advertising to become one and the same thing. On theplus side, one side effect has been that commercials have been gettingmore entertaining as of late, but the downside is that everything else isbecoming more and more generic, vapid, and devoid of meaning. This trend has even larger social implications, but I willleave that discussion for a later time so that I can get back to work onthe new CD. But to finish the story, absent a viable female vocalist Idecided to give my falsetto voice another try and practiced for severalweeks before laying down the final tracks. Don't worry, the good newsis that I sound pretty good singing like that and the new microphonecertainly helped me to get solid sound quality. I have no regrets aboutreleasing the CD with me singing those delicate parts. I do regret thatit is so difficult to enlist the services of professional musicians to helpout with my projects. Without the dream of stardom to dangle in frontthem, it seems that you can't even pay them to play for you. It's abummer. But if the promise of great riches is the only thing thatmotivates us, no wonder we have bubbles, tunnel-vision, and theinevitable crashes.

The Fireaxe theory - Outline

I. Basics - well established theories

1. Emergent systems - that complex systems can arise from theinteractions of simple things2. Natural selection - that organisms mutate, proliferate, and compete,with the "losers" becoming extinct3. Behavioral science - that neurological systems, at their core, functionaccording to the rules of conditioning4. Entropy - that within a closed system, entropy always increases,which limits the amount of transformation that can occur

II. Extensions

1. That consciousness is an emergent system: a complex system arisingin the human mind from the interaction of simple neurons.2. That civilizations are emergent systems arising from the physicalinteractions of humans whether conscious or not.3. That ideologies are emergent systems arising from the psychologicalinteractions of conscious humans4. That emergent systems follow the laws of natural selection in muchthe same way that organisms do5. That the universe is, by definition, a closed system

III. Contentions regarding consciousness

1. That consciousness is a survival advantage2. That being a member of an ideology is a survival advantage3. That making its members conscious is a necessary part of anideology's survival4. That consciousness is created by instilling within a person apermanent sense of inadequacy - in essence a state of constant fear5. That the deeper the sense of inadequacy, the stronger the personis motivated - generally to serve their ideology

IV. Contentions regarding ideological struggle

1. That ideologies fight for survival using many methods including,but not limited to, war and enslavement2. That aggression is a survival advantage3. That aggressive ideologies make members of rival ideologiesfeel afraid and inadequate which in response become more aggressive,thus creating a vicious circle4. That aggressive ideologies must continue to grow or face internalstrife as their aggressive members will feed on each other to satisfytheir needs5. That internal struggle results in ideological mutation

V. Contentions regarding the future

1. That internal strife is inevitable since the laws of entropy implythat continuous growth is not sustainable2. That the abstract bases for ideologies transcend mortality and thussuicidal aggression is not restrained by fear of death3. That ideological mutation will eventually result in the creation ofa suicidal ideology which will attempt to save the human race bydestroying it

How to order Fireaxe CDs:

Ordering Fireaxe CD's is an informal process as I am sellingthem personally out of my apartment. Simply mail me a letter whichcontains the following:

1. The names of the CDs that you want to buy.2. The address where you want the CDs sent.3. Cash, a check, or a money order for the total cost.

Here is a price list. The first number is the cost for U.S.based customers, the second is for outside the U.S. The pricesinclude shipping and handling.

Food for the Gods: $12 $14Victory or Death $5 $7Lovecraftian Nightmares $5 $7 - Sold outA Dream of Death $3 $5 - slim only - booklet out of print

Send everything to:

Brian Voth 1301 Medical Center Dr. #415 Chula Vista, CA 91911 USA

If you review CDs on a website or in a magazine, any oneof the single CDs (Not "Food for the Gods") is free of charge inexchange for the review. In this case all I need is a request bye-mail. Please send me the URL of your review site or copy of yourmagazine with the review in it when it is done. If you want toexchange CDs, tapes, or stuff of equivalent value, make theserequests via e-mail and we'll arrange a trade. The CDs come with a booklet filled with awesome art, aletter about the project, and some information about the CD whichcan also be found on the Fireaxe site. Lastly, if you want to print and distribute Fireaxe CDs Ican send you an additional CD which contains tiff files for all thebooklets, tray cards, and labels for each project. The tiff disk is freeso just say the word.

The Future

For the rest of this year and part of the next I will be recordingthe next Fireaxe CD entitled "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess".I should have it completed by the end of 2007. The new CD will digdeep into the dark crevices of our society and our minds, pull forth themyths that we cling to and hold dear, and expose them all for whatthey are. While “A Dream of Death” explored the madness of dreams,and “Food for the Gods” described the chaos wrought upon the earthby ideologies, “Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess” will depict thepsychological enslavement of the individual in modern times. It willbe the darkest Fireaxe work ever. My goal is to deliver music to whoever wants to hear it inwhatever way is necessary. Whatever the market demands, I will supply,but I do want to avoid the mass marketing channel. Exposure is fine, butin the modern business, the substance of the music must be altered tomatch the demands of the marketplace. This would totally defeat thepurpose of why I write music in the first place. I write music because itis a way to express my emotions. What I both think and feel goes intothe songs. That is the power, Fireaxe is the channel, and any diversiondiminishes the emotive effect. Thus I try to avoid such diversions.That is how art should be.

Rights to duplicate Fireaxe materials

Currently Fireaxe is not for profit. I sell the single CDs for$5, $12 for "Food for the Gods" since it is three CDs, which coversthe production and mailing costs. For CDs sent out of the country,I'll have to charge an extra $2 per disk to cover the additional mailingcost. If you write reviews or put samples on your website I'll give you aCD for free. Since I am not making any money with the currentrecordings, you are free to make duplicates of them to distribute aslong as you obey the following guidelines:

1. You can only sell the duplications for the price of the medium or less, plus any delivery cost. You are not allowed to make any profit with the music.2. You should tell me how many copies you gave out and who got them so I can keep track. Also, if they have an e-mail address I'd like that as well so I can add them to the mailing list.3. You are likewise free to adorn any webpages or duplications with the gifs and jpgs on my website as long as you include an obvious link back to my website. This includes putting Fireaxe song samples on your site as well.4. You are free to play any Fireaxe songs (in unaltered form) provided you are an unsigned band without a marketing tie-in. You are not allowed to record those songs onto anything that you will sell.5. You are food for the gods.6. You are required to crank the song "Hounds of Tindalos" as loud as you can as often as you can. It’s your only defense against THEM. Be warned, they come through angles. Note that the CD is round. Are your speaker cabinets square?7. Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, Hastur the Unspeakable, and all other mythos creatures are purely the inventions of Lovecraft and other fiction authors. None of it is real, at least that’s what I’m going to say in court if you try to sue me for destruction of your property, house, city, or soul as a result of listening to the “Lovecraftian Nightmares” CD too much.8. You are free to play "The Rack" in school or church or any other institution bent on crushing your will and turning you into a mindless zombie slave of the corporate dominated world. Try not to develop a bad attitude about it.9. You are not free to commit suicide while listening to any Fireaxe song. I'm sorry, I'll have to prosecute. On a serious note, if you are thinking about doing it, please e-mail or call me if you have no one else to talk to. When I was in my teens the album "The Wall" by Pink Floyd used to really get to me. Just hearing songs like "Comfortably Numb", and "Hey You" would get me pretty depressed and mildly suicidal. I'm just trying to say that I've been there. If my music is having that effect on you, please get in touch. You aren't alone.

The gist of it is that you can do just about anything with themusic as long as you don't profit from it and that I get some sort ofcredit for having written it. I'm open to any methods of distributingmy music, such as compilation tapes or CDs, radio play, or recordinglabel distribution. However, you will need my direct permission todo so or some kind of legal agreement.

Ending Comments

Any comments or questions are welcome. If anyone has anyupdates on their projects, I'd like to hear from you. I know thereare a few people out there working on some cool things that I haven'theard from in a while. Drop me an e-mail regarding how you'regetting along.

"I watched my beloved angel shed a tear for my lost love, and become a demon goddess with wings of burning fire." - Fireaxe "Black Knight"

It was four years ago when the mighty Santa Ana winds blewhot and dry, sweeping down out of the hills and driving ravenousflames towards the Fireaxe studio in eastern Chula Vista. At that timeI jokingly wrote that it was a divine attempt to prevent the release of"Food for the Gods" because of all the blasphemy and heresy that itcontained. But this year, as "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess"neared completion, the Santa Anas rose again and raged more powerfulthan ever, scorching hundreds of thousands of acres, destroying thousandsof houses, and forcing evacuations on the outer edges of my fair city.Coincidence? I think not. Someone up there doesn't like me or whatI'm doing one bit. I suspect that it's the Christian god. He's the deity who causedthe great flood, wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah, and told George Bushto attack Iraq. He's also the one that I used to believe in but now enjoyexposing as a fraud. Sure, I hear some of you out there saying that no,the Christian god is all about love and forgiveness and he would neverdo such a thing as burn down half of Southern California in an attemptto stop a single CD from being released. Well, I've read the bible and Ican tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. That Christiangod is one petty, violent, and childish deity who's not afraid to slaughterinnocents and destroy cities just to punish a few who refuse to do whathe says. I mean, it only stands to reason. However, another thought did occur to me as I was busymixing in my humble apartment while watching the news reports offires getting closer and closer to me, and that was that perhaps this wasnot the work of the Christian god at all but rather it was the acts of theDark Goddess herself, celebrating the release of another Fireaxe CDwhich portrays her in a positive light. That made sense too, and I canimagine her frolicking in the parched hills of Southern California,setting the chaparral ablaze with her burning wings as she rocks outto my music with pleasure and abandon. In fact, I'd be pretty honoredif that was the case if it wasn't for the fact that over two thousandfamilies lost their homes due to the booty-shaking of the goddess ofdeath and destruction. Worse still is the notion that there may beliability issues involved if my music had something to do with it so Ifeel compelled to issue a disclaimer. Folks, it's not my fault. Honest.I'm not trying to summon up malevolent deities from the nether worldand I'm not trying to get revenge on all the people whose house pricestripled while I sat here renting for years. All that I'm doing is deliveringa message that death is real, that we should accept it, and that we shouldlive our lives accordingly, and if that makes the Dark Goddess want toburn a path of devastation across my state then maybe you should listento my message instead of trying to shut me up. Furthermore, if I reallydo have some kind of control over the Dark Goddess, do you really wantto mess with me? I thought not. Then I had another thought, and that was that the fires weren'thappening because the Dark Goddess was celebrating the release of theCDs but rather that they were a message from the Dark Goddess tellingme to hurry up and release them, or else. Point well taken. I've spentnearly as much time on "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess" as I didon "Food for the Gods" and the latter project was 3 CDs long. Am I lazyor a perfectionist or what? Sure, the new CD looks and sounds reallygood, but I have to admit that it did take me a lot longer than I wantedto get it out the door. So maybe you can take comfort in the fact that it'snot just you who are tired of waiting, the goddess of death wants a copyof the CD too and she's going to make sure that the pressure is on. All in all I really don't know what the divine message is inregards to the fires. It could be one of the things that I mentioned aboveor it could be something else that I didn't think of. Of course, it couldn'tbe that the fires were just the result of dry weather, high winds, fallenpower lines, and arsonists. And the fact that both fires happened when Iwas about to release a new CD couldn't be just a coincidence. That'sneither interesting nor meaningful. So it had to be a message from onegod or another. I suppose that I could ask one of the "experts", like thePope or Billy Graham or the guy down at the corner who hands outhomemade pamphlets, as to what it all means but since the experts neveragree on those kinds of things I suspect that none of them would knowfor sure. And their followers? Please. When an image of Pope JohnPaul II appeared in a bonfire on the second anniversary of his deathCatholics couldn't decide whether it meant that he was in heaven or hell.Seriously, how much more obvious does it have to be? Does he have toappear holding a pitchfork, breathing fire, and be shouting "Don't think,just obey! I'm infallible! I'm the infallible Pope! I speak for God anddoubt comes from the devil! Genuflect you bastards! Muahahahahaha!" Now, the Fireaxe theory tells me that I should interpret such adivine message in a way that motivates me to work harder towards thegoals of the ideology that I follow, but since I don't follow one I'm at aloss to adequately explain the coincidence. So I'm left with simplycoming up with an explanation that makes me feel good, which is themodern way, and in that regard I feel that the image of the most powerfulgoddess in the universe being driven into a state of total ecstasy byFireaxe music and dancing naked in the hills while leaving a trail ofdespair and destruction in her wake, is the most satisfying one of all.Praise be to Kali! And to you, oh great goddess of death, rememberthat if I die the music dies too, so don't let those flames get to close tome, okay? A big ‘Hello’ to anyone receiving the Burning Blade for thefirst time. This is the Fireaxe newsletter.

"Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess" is finally finished

The parts have all been recorded and put in their places.The tracks have been mixed and balanced and equalized and thecomposition has gelled into 100% pure power-prog. The mix hasbeen mastered with a light hand and attention to the dynamic as wellas a desire for a heavy and powerful sound. And the artwork, oh manthe artwork, is probably good enough to sell a hundred discs on itsown. The wait has been worth your while. The CD is out of my hands now and in the hands of themen who are going to crank out the copies of the best Fireaxe workto date. If all goes well I should have the finished products back in acouple of weeks, but there always seem to be complications and soI won't accept orders until the CDs meet my standards. I'll send outa short e-mail when they are ready, so for now you will have to besatisfied with reading about the new CD instead of hearing it.

The Artwork

After ambivalent reactions to the covers of the last twoFireaxe CDs, "Food for the Gods" and "Lovecraftian Nightmares",I realized that the problem was that I needed to get my ugly mugoff of the cover and replace it with the visage of some incrediblybeautiful woman, such as the case was with "A Dream of Death".So instead of a portrait of me getting sacrificed to various ideologiesor one of me about to get eaten by something which must not benamed, this time you will be treated to a stunning and fiery portrayalof the Dark Goddess herself in all her malevolent glory, painstakinglyillustrated by none other than yours truly. I know what you're thinking, that perhaps I should haveshelled out some cash and had a professional artist do the cover art.I concur. After taking a lot of flack over the cover art for "Victoryor Death" it was clear that I either needed to work a lot harder atbeing a better artist or hire someone who did that kind of thing for aliving. I asked an old friend if his wife would be interested since I'dseen a number of impressive color pieces that she'd done on herwebsite but unfortunately that didn't go anywhere, so I took a crackat it myself, figuring that if I fell short of what I wanted that I couldhand it off to someone else to transform it into something awesome.Well, to my surprise I didn't fall short. I'm not sure what happenedbetween the release of "Food for the Gods" and when I started workon the new CD but apparently I acquired some serious skills in thegraphic arts category. Okay, maybe they aren't that serious, I mean,I'm not going to make anyone forget Frazetta or Vallejo, but I'mpretty sure that the days of getting snide comments about the coverart are over. Simply put the Dark Goddess is beautiful. She looks likea combination of Kali, Pele, and a drow priestess with eight arms,jet black skin, and a pair of brilliant burning wings. She might makeyou think about the line from "Black Knight" that I quoted at the top:

"I watched my beloved angel shed a tear for my lost love,and become a demon goddess with wings of burning fire."

After which you might pull out your copy of "A Dream ofDeath" which has an angel shedding a tear on the cover and placethem side by side. Nifty symmetry don't you think? Anyway, I didn't want to try and squeeze the Dark Goddessinto the puny 5" by 5" space provided on a standard CD insert. Sucha tiny portrait would probably be considered an insult and you do not,I repeat, YOU DO NOT want to get the Dark Goddess angry at you forany reason, so I decided to go with a six-panel foldout booklet and allowher to luxuriate inside a generous 15" by 10" domain. That's roughlythe size of an old album cover for those of you who are old enough toremember them and also those of you who've seen any of those ancientartifacts. I always loved it when bands put out albums with brilliantcover art since it added to the listening experience. I've wanted FireaxeCDs to be the same way and I've tried hard to provide artwork thatmatched the style and themes of the music even if the result was alittle too amateurish at times. This time around I think that I nailedit, but I'll let you be the judge. If it helps loosen up your purse strings, the Dark Goddessappears completely nude, save for her necklace of skulls. Don't worry,they don't cover anything up and neither does her hair, which isanother trick that artists use to frustrate their male viewers. Also,she does not look like the statue of Kali that appears in the "Food forthe Gods" booklet in the section containing "The Servant of Pain".No, in my imagination the Dark Goddess is not a skinny old hag,instead she is beautiful enough to appear in the pages of Playboy,which is the source of the pictures of the women who I modeled herafter. Of course, I had to use magazines for that purpose consideringthat it's nearly impossible for me to get a beautiful woman into myapartment for any reason let alone have her take off her clothes andstand still for hours while I draw pictures of her. But then, one of thebenefits of using magazines was that I could raid the stash that Icollected as a teenager in the eighties. That was back when themagazine took pictures of "the girl next door" instead of "the hodown the street". So, needless to say, the Dark Goddess does nothave implants.

The Sound

Between the time when I recorded "Food for the Gods" and"Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess" I made a few upgrades tomy digital studio, most notably the addition of a Neumann TLM-103,one of the best cardioid microphones in the business along with astate of the art vocal processing unit. That was a big step up from myold microphone and the result was that my vocals on the new CDsound extremely clear, warm, and strong. That combined with a solidyear of practice resulted in a dramatic improvement in the quality ofFireaxe vocals. I no longer see my singing as a liability to the musicand in fact in many places I feel that it is an asset. As usual I do a lotof different styles of vocals on the CD, from clean to gruff to quiet toscreaming and everywhere in between. I even had to do a few partswhich I wanted to have sung by a female vocalist and I feel that Ipulled them off pretty well too. So maybe, just maybe I'll be free ofreviewers' snide remarks about Fireaxe vocals once and for all too. Another improvement was the guitar sound on the CD.In the past I had a strong tendency to pump up the high-middlefrequencies on the guitars so that I could get the sharp, crisp soundthat I wanted. The trouble with that was that the sound often endedup too thin and "crunchy" and didn't sound too good on some speakersand systems, especially cheap ones. So this time around I put a lot ofwork on trying to clean the "muddiness" out of the guitar trackswithout sacrificing the sharp sound that I was looking for. It's notas easy as it seems. There are about forty different knobs, sliders,and buttons that you can tinker with between the guitar and the finalmix so triangulating on the correct formula takes a long time. Plus,since I need to record directly into the board instead of through anamp and microphone I face the additional problem of needing toclean all of the fuzziness out of the signal that an amplifier doesnaturally. It's quite a challenge, but this time around I feel that I'vegot a really strong and balanced sound from the guitars, especiallyin the solos, where the tone is rich and smooth. I was also able toget the bass guitar sound to emerge out of the mix without beingintrusive or overwhelming and it rounds out the sound rather well.Slowly but surely I'm learning all the tricks of the trade. The final mix flat out rocks. It sounds much, much betterthan the rough cuts that I released earlier this year. I made good useof the limiter to get the volume up but stayed away from compressingthe mix so that the full dynamic was left intact. That was criticalin achieving the "Rock Opera" feel of the CD which has a lot oftransitions between heavier parts and lighter movements and needsto have the volume fluctuate between them. Compression will justsquash everything up to full volume and crush the dynamic. I'dadvise other bands out there to avoid compressing your mixes, evena little. It only sounds good that way for about twenty seconds, afterwhich you just wish that the music was out of your face. I also worked hard on getting the levels balanced betweenthe individual instruments so that the emphasis shifts around fromone instrument to another throughout the songs and the harmonyblends nicely. That was one of the reasons why the mixing andmastering took so long. Each time I listened to the music I found afew more things that I could change to make it sound better, and witheach change I got more confident that I could produce something thatsounded just as good as professionally recorded music. After a couplemonths the tracks were really sounding good and I fell victim to thecurse of rising expectations, trying to squeeze a little more out of thetracks than what I could accomplish. By that time the CD was almostliterally burning a hole in my studio. It desperately wanted to getout and be heard and so I set aside my perfectionism and cut a finalmix. The CD isn't perfect, but it is really good, and not just "goodfor music recorded in a home studio". The best part about the mix is that it sounds good on justabout any platform without needing to make any adjustments to theequalization. So far I've listened to it through three widely differentsets of speakers and three pairs of headphones from the cheap onesthat come with your iPod to a pair of two-hundred dollar Sennheisensand in each case the music came out sounding clear, well-balanced,and strong. I didn't have to make many compromises, it sounds howI want it to sound. And while I know that I can do better with betterequipment and more experience, I am proud of what I've accomplished.Also, I have to give credit where credit is due and thank you all foryour support over the years. Those of you who've related to me yourhonest criticisms and sung my praises with ringing endorsementshave given me confidence that I can compete alongside the "big boys"and inspired me to work all the harder to match that level of quality.You have personally made me a better musician/producer/artist. I thankyou deeply.

The Music

Fireaxe continues to evolve. Within "Eternal Devotionto the Dark Goddess" you'll find all of the elements of Fireaxe musicthat you've come to appreciate, from simple soft verses to toweringstacks of harmony, from ferocious driving riffs to methodical powerballads, from scintillating guitar solos to calmly plucked melodies,and all of it wrapped around a central theme that cuts brutally acrossthe grain of the modern landscape. Told in nine parts and fillingalmost every available second on an eighty minute CD the work isanother epic tragedy that explores the ideologies of today and foretellsa dark and dreadful future. Of course, that's what you've come to expect from Fireaxe.So what's new about this CD? Well, of all the tales that I've toldthrough my music, "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess" iswithout a doubt the darkest and most disturbing story of all. I'm notgoing to go into detail about it so as not to ruin the impact of yourfirst listen to this work, so instead I'll just say that any search withinthis CD for an uplifting or positive message will be completely futile.The protagonist is anything but heroic and the antagonist has gapingcharacter flaws as well, and their conflict is summed up well in a quotefrom the final track, "The world is not black and white, it is black andblack." The tale is a journey through our modern world where sadism,deceit, and exploitation lay waiting behind every shining promise. Itis a tale of cut-throat capitalism, of torture and abuse of power, and ofthe desperate struggle to preserve love and purity in a world of lust anddebauchery, but mostly it is about lies and how they used to create anddestroy. In the CD I unravel the fabric of our ideologies, institutions,and dreams and reveal the base threads that form the core of our society.As always I leave nothing sacred and if I didn't get around to tearinginto your particular beliefs in this CD then you'll just have to wait forthe next one. Those of you who have the first Fireaxe CD "A Dreamof Death" may notice a number of plot similarities between it andthe new CD. That's a sign that I'm running out of ideas. He he he.No, while there are similarities between the two stories, it is thedifferences which are most important. While "A Dream of Death"had a protagonist which was idealistic and hopeful, the protagonistin "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess" is anything but. Andwhile he does begin the CD with youthful ambitions and a naïveview of the world those traits are stripped from him very early on.Instead he takes the listener on a tour of the dark side of the worldwhere aggression, greed, and ruthlessness are the traits of the victorsand in which he rises to power by embracing those ideals. The CD issomewhat like "A Dream of Death", but with the lovely blue, yellow,and white colors obliterated by a convulsing mixture of black and red.This is no dream, it is a nightmare from start to finish. Those of you who've heard a lot of Fireaxe know that I don'tuse profanity very much in my music. I feel that it generally detractsfrom the lyrics and that there's usually a more intense way to capturethe same feeling, but in the new CD I use profanity a lot more thanusual. Of course, the point is not to sell more CDs. There are a fewreasons why I loosened up my standards, the most important of whichbeing that vulgar words were often the best ones to use in many of thepassages. When used judiciously, one "f-bomb" can go a long way,and there is simply no better term to use to describe politicians thanthe one that suggests that they are having sexual relations with oneof their parents. Secondly, not only do I use profanity in the CD butI get pretty graphic in a lot of places, often using words that are goingto get bleeped out if the songs ever make it to the airwaves. One reasonfor that is that the profane words greatly increase the emotional impactof the events I describe, but I also wanted to capture the general vulgarityof the time period that we're living in, one that I will not mind seeingcome to a close. Too many things have become saturated with vulgarityto excess which has made anything subtle become all but invisible.Nuance is dead and extremism rules the roost. I tried to capture thatmodern decadent feel in this CD and I think that I have. Be warned,you might find yourself grasping for the lyrics sheet asking yourself,"did he really say THAT?" Yep, I probably did. Also new in this CD is a bona fide love song, or rather alengthy section of a longer track where I put away the guitars andweave a elegant tapestry of love and romance with only my voice andmy keyboard. I'm very pleased, and more than a little relieved, that itturned out as good as it did. It's so sweet and innocent that it feelsout of place in the rest of the CD, but the contrast is what I neededto make the song work. The track, "My Angel", is perhaps the mostemotionally intense Fireaxe song ever, which saying a lot, so you don'twant to miss it. It's also the longest track on the CD, weighing in atnearly sixteen minutes. The song is an epic tragedy in and of itselfbut it fits in well with the rest of the tale, speeding the protagonist'sdescent into hell. Overall I feel that the music is more "mature" and refinedthan that on previous Fireaxe CDs. By that I don't mean to imply thatthe previous CDs were "immature" in any way (it's not adolescentrebellion, it's pointed social commentary), but that the new CD hasa more confident and relaxed feel to it. That is probably due to megrowing as an artist and getting a firmer command over the mediumthat I'm using. Maybe some of the mature feel is due to the betterrecording and production quality too. It's hard to tell for sure, but Ido know that this CD sounds terrific. Anyway, enough about me going on and on about my music.I'll go back to going on and on about the sorry state of the globaleconomy next year. Until then, praise be to Kali, may she continueto frolic down Wall Street with reckless abandon and may she keepdancing and grooving until each and every one of the "Masters of theUniverse" are humiliated, penniless, and begging her to release themfrom their wretched lives.

The Fireaxe theory - Outline

I. Basics - well established theories

1. Emergent systems - that complex systems can arise from theinteractions of simple things2. Natural selection - that organisms mutate, proliferate, and compete,with the "losers" becoming extinct3. Behavioral science - that neurological systems, at their core, functionaccording to the rules of conditioning4. Entropy - that within a closed system, entropy always increases,which limits the amount of transformation that can occur

II. Extensions

1. That consciousness is an emergent system: a complex system arisingin the human mind from the interaction of simple neurons.2. That civilizations are emergent systems arising from the physicalinteractions of humans whether conscious or not.3. That ideologies are emergent systems arising from the psychologicalinteractions of conscious humans4. That emergent systems follow the laws of natural selection in muchthe same way that organisms do5. That the universe is, by definition, a closed system

III. Contentions regarding consciousness

1. That consciousness is a survival advantage2. That being a member of an ideology is a survival advantage3. That making its members conscious is a necessary part of anideology's survival4. That consciousness is created by instilling within a person apermanent sense of inadequacy - in essence a state of constant fear5. That the deeper the sense of inadequacy, the stronger the personis motivated - generally to serve their ideology

IV. Contentions regarding ideological struggle

1. That ideologies fight for survival using many methods including,but not limited to, war and enslavement2. That aggression is a survival advantage3. That aggressive ideologies make members of rival ideologiesfeel afraid and inadequate which in response become more aggressive,thus creating a vicious circle4. That aggressive ideologies must continue to grow or face internalstrife as their aggressive members will feed on each other to satisfytheir needs5. That internal struggle results in ideological mutation

V. Contentions regarding the future

1. That internal strife is inevitable since the laws of entropy implythat continuous growth is not sustainable2. That the abstract bases for ideologies transcend mortality and thussuicidal aggression is not restrained by fear of death3. That ideological mutation will eventually result in the creation ofa suicidal ideology which will attempt to save the human race bydestroying it

How to order Fireaxe CDs:

Ordering Fireaxe CD's is an informal process as I am sellingthem personally out of my apartment. Simply mail me a letter whichcontains the following:

1. The names of the CDs that you want to buy.2. The address where you want the CDs sent.3. Cash, a check, or a money order for the total cost.

Here is a price list. The first number is the cost for U.S.based customers, the second is for outside the U.S. The pricesinclude shipping and handling.

Food for the Gods: $12 $14 - 2 copies leftVictory or Death $5 $7Lovecraftian Nightmares $5 $7 - Sold outA Dream of Death $3 $5 - slim only - booklet out of print

Send everything to:

Brian Voth 1301 Medical Center Dr. #415 Chula Vista, CA 91911 USA

If you review CDs on a website or in a magazine, any oneof the single CDs (Not "Food for the Gods") is free of charge inexchange for the review. In this case all I need is a request bye-mail. Please send me the URL of your review site or copy of yourmagazine with the review in it when it is done. If you want toexchange CDs, tapes, or stuff of equivalent value, make theserequests via e-mail and we'll arrange a trade. The CDs come with a booklet filled with awesome art, aletter about the project, and some information about the CD whichcan also be found on the Fireaxe site. Lastly, if you want to print and distribute Fireaxe CDs Ican send you an additional CD which contains tiff files for all thebooklets, tray cards, and labels for each project. The tiff disk is freeso just say the word.

The Future

In 2008, Fireaxe will take a step back and work on a couple ofprojects from the past. First of all, "Food for the Gods" has sold outand will be re-mastered before a second printing run is made. Also, itmay also be re-mixed for even better sound quality depending on timeconstraints. Secondly, the first Fireaxe CD, "A Dream of Death" willbe getting a complete overhaul before it is re-released. Everything willbe re-recorded using much more modern equipment and with everythingthat I've learned over the last ten years going into it to make it better thanever. Also, since it was recorded at a time when CDs had a 74 minutelimit instead of the current eighty, I will add six more minutes of musicto the work in which I will explore a number of musical themes and makethe CD that much better. So it looks like a year of sequels for Fireaxe.I'll probably leave the names the same but I've been kicking around a fewnew ideas for the CDs, such as "Food for the Gods - Regurgitated", "Desertfor the Gods", and "A Dream of Undeath", "The Morning After Death", or"I'm Dreaming of a White Strait-Jacket - a Fireaxe Christmas in Hell". My goal is to deliver music to whoever wants to hear it inwhatever way is necessary. Whatever the market demands, I will supply,but I do want to avoid the mass marketing channel. Exposure is fine, butin the modern business, the substance of the music must be altered tomatch the demands of the marketplace. This would totally defeat thepurpose of why I write music in the first place. I write music because itis a way to express my emotions. What I both think and feel goes intothe songs. That is the power, Fireaxe is the channel, and any diversiondiminishes the emotive effect. Thus I try to avoid such diversions.That is how art should be.

Rights to duplicate Fireaxe materials

Currently Fireaxe is not for profit. I sell the single CDs for$5, $12 for "Food for the Gods" since it is three CDs, which coversthe production and mailing costs. For CDs sent out of the country,I'll have to charge an extra $2 per disk to cover the additional mailingcost. If you write reviews or put samples on your website I'll give you aCD for free. Since I am not making any money with the currentrecordings, you are free to make duplicates of them to distribute aslong as you obey the following guidelines:

1. You can only sell the duplications for the price of the medium or less, plus any delivery cost. You are not allowed to make any profit with the music.2. You should tell me how many copies you gave out and who got them so I can keep track. Also, if they have an e-mail address I'd like that as well so I can add them to the mailing list.3. You are likewise free to adorn any webpages or duplications with the gifs and jpgs on my website as long as you include an obvious link back to my website. This includes putting Fireaxe song samples on your site as well.4. You are free to play any Fireaxe songs (in unaltered form) provided you are an unsigned band without a marketing tie-in. You are not allowed to record those songs onto anything that you will sell.5. You are food for the gods.6. You are required to crank the song "Hounds of Tindalos" as loud as you can as often as you can. It’s your only defense against THEM. Be warned, they come through angles. Note that the CD is round. Are your speaker cabinets square?7. Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, Hastur the Unspeakable, and all other mythos creatures are purely the inventions of Lovecraft and other fiction authors. None of it is real, at least that’s what I’m going to say in court if you try to sue me for destruction of your property, house, city, or soul as a result of listening to the “Lovecraftian Nightmares” CD too much.8. You are free to play "The Rack" in school or church or any other institution bent on crushing your will and turning you into a mindless zombie slave of the corporate dominated world. Try not to develop a bad attitude about it.9. You are not free to commit suicide while listening to any Fireaxe song. I'm sorry, I'll have to prosecute. On a serious note, if you are thinking about doing it, please e-mail or call me if you have no one else to talk to. When I was in my teens the album "The Wall" by Pink Floyd used to really get to me. Just hearing songs like "Comfortably Numb", and "Hey You" would get me pretty depressed and mildly suicidal. I'm just trying to say that I've been there. If my music is having that effect on you, please get in touch. You aren't alone.

The gist of it is that you can do just about anything with themusic as long as you don't profit from it and that I get some sort ofcredit for having written it. I'm open to any methods of distributingmy music, such as compilation tapes or CDs, radio play, or recordinglabel distribution. However, you will need my direct permission todo so or some kind of legal agreement.

Ending Comments

Any comments or questions are welcome. If anyone has anyupdates on their projects, I'd like to hear from you. I know thereare a few people out there working on some cool things that I haven'theard from in a while. Drop me an e-mail regarding how you'regetting along.

1. Emergent systems - that complex systems can arise from theinteractions of simple things2. Natural selection - that organisms mutate, proliferate, and compete,with the "losers" becoming extinct3. Behavioral science - that neurological systems, at their core, functionaccording to the rules of [ systemic logic ]4. Entropy - that within a closed system, entropy always increases,which limits the amount of transformation that can occur

II. Extensions

1. That consciousness is an emergent system: a complex system arisingin the human mind from the interaction of simple neurons.2. That civilizations are emergent systems arising from the physicalinteractions of humans whether conscious or not.3. That ideologies are emergent systems arising from the psychologicalinteractions of conscious humans [ in civilizations ]4. That emergent systems follow the laws of natural selection in muchthe same way that organisms do5. That the universe is, by definition, a closed system

III. Contentions regarding consciousness

1. That consciousness is a survival advantage2. That being a member of an ideology [ or organic group ] is a survival advantage3. That making its members conscious is a necessary part of anideology's survival

IV. Contentions regarding ideological struggle

1. That ideologies fight for survival using many methods including,but not limited to, war and enslavement2. That aggression is a survival advantage3. That aggressive ideologies make members of rival ideologiesfeel afraid and inadequate which in response become more aggressive,thus creating a vicious circle4. That aggressive ideologies must continue to grow or face internalstrife as their aggressive members will feed on each other to satisfytheir needs5. That internal struggle results in ideological mutation [ or affirmation ]

V. Contentions regarding the future

1. That internal strife is inevitable since the laws of entropy implythat continuous growth is not sustainable2. That the abstract bases for ideologies transcend mortality and thussuicidal aggression is not restrained by fear of death

The selected bits represent the best translations of Nietzsche-cum-Schopenhauer to hit heavy metal in some time. (Some critical marks added)

"And as the Dark Goddess descends, you will bid her welcome. For by the Dark Goddess' hand, all your pain will disappear." - Fireaxe "I Used to be Young"

"Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess" is finally ready. Yeah, I know. It's about damn time. Four years is a long timeto wait between releases, but keep in mind that don't make music for aliving and thus I need a full time job to pay the bills. The down side isthat I can't spend as much time making music as I want to, but the upside is that I have full creative control over every part of the music andart that go into Fireaxe. I feel that it's worth the trade-off. But even ifI were independently wealthy and could spend as much time as I wantedmaking music I don't think that I could write and record more than oneCD every two years. Inspiration is critical to the creative process andgood ideas don't happen on demand. You can't force a good song outof you. If you try it generally sounds derivative and flat. So part of thereason that Fireaxe releases don't happen very often is that it takes timefor me to collect and assemble enough cool ideas to produce a work ofart that measures up to my standards. I'm not going to produce junk.And yeah, I do other things besides just work and create music, sosometimes by favorite hobby has to be set aside now and then. But nowthe wait is over. A big ‘Hello’ to anyone receiving the Burning Blade for thefirst time. This is a special CD release issue of the Fireaxe newsletter.

"Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess" is available for purchase

The new CD is ready and waiting for your orders. It looksgreat, it sounds great, and if you're not careful it's going to knock yousmartly on to your backside. Prepare yourself for the deepest Fireaxedescent into hell to date. More good news is that I finally broke down and started upmy own PayPal account, so now you will be able to buy Fireaxe CDsthrough the internet instead of sending checks, money orders, or cashthrough the mail. This is not such a big deal for U.S. residents, butfor people living in other countries and using other currencies, PayPalmakes things a lot simpler and cheaper. Wire transfers are too costlywhen the amounts are less than $20 and money orders are a pain. Sonow you can pay just by clicking a mouse. What could be simpler?But please finalize your order with me in e-mail before sending anymoney. In the past I used to charge $5 for the single CD Fireaxereleases. Unfortunately this low, low price is a thing of the past nowthat I am producing pressed CDs with fancy full color 12-panel fold-upbooklets. Add to that the cost of oil going up and inflation in generaland you can see that I have to charge more than in the past. Braceyourself for a massive 20% price hike. Yes, "Eternal Devotion to theDark Goddess" is going to cost $6 per copy. Sorry, there's nothingthat I can do about it. Personally, I blame Alan Greenspan. However, because the replication houses aren't able tocontrol the exact number of CDs they print in any run, I ended upwith 20 extra copies of the CD complete with booklets and jewelcases. So I've decided to give away a free CD to the first twentypeople who order "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess". Also,because replication houses don't press CDs in any quantity less thanfive-hundred, which is four hundred more copies than I sold of"Food for the Gods", I've got a lot of CDs which need to find goodhomes. So the more that you all can help me to spread the word thebetter. Thanks for everything you all have done so far in helping meget the word out and thanks in advance for everything to come as well. Also available for purchase are a couple of full-size postersof the cover art. I wanted to make one poster for myself to hang onmy wall and show off the long hours that I spent slaving over a hotMac, so I blew up the cover art to three times its original size andtook it to Kinko's for printing. The poster looked great when it cameout of the printer, but they had some trouble with the laminationprocess and they had to try it a few times before they got it right.That left a few defective copies lying around that they were goingto throw away. Now, while the "rejects" are flawed, they still lookreally good, and you can only see the defects if you look closely atthem. So I asked if I could have the defective prints as well as theoriginal in case anyway wanted one. Well, they couldn't just givethem away, but they sold them to me at a huge discount, so now Ihave a couple of slightly flawed posters to offer to you. These posters are big, 48" x 32", printed on glossy paper,which made the colors turn out brilliant, and laminated so you don'thave to worry about them getting scratched, scuffed, or torn. Plus,you can see all of the details that I put into the artwork, which makesit look that much better than the CD booklet. I really love mine.Anyway, the price I paid for each defective poster was $15. Thecost of shipping will be a little more since it requires a large mailingtube, so I will offer the two posters that I have for $20 each. Thatprice might sound steep, but printers charge $12 per square footfor oversize prints, so the total price for the flawless copy hangingon my wall is over $100. Ouch. But I was willing to pay that muchbecause I wanted a lasting copy of something that I was very proudof. Now, I wish that I could get that price down to what you pay forregular band posters, but until Fireaxe becomes popular enough sothat mass production is viable, which doesn't seem very likely, there'sreally no good cost effective option for stuff like posters, T-shirts, wristbands, pendants, or a wall mount display that features a pair of chromeplated crossed axes with an electric "eternal flame" pattern roiling overthem and a glowing "Forever Vigilance" motto framing the piece.You'll have to make stuff like that yourself. However, JPGs of thecover art are available on request. Check out a small version here:

neptune.net/~bev/Eternalposter.jpg

A close-up is here:

neptune.net/~bev/FireEternal.html

By the way, I've had to chop the first part off of the linksthat go into the e-mails that I send since URLs usually get flaggedby spam filters and returned to me. So if you want to go to that linkyou'll have to add in the http part and the : and the // and the www. Now, I thought that the new CD would be ready beforeChristmas but the first replication house that I went to turned out tobe considerably less professional than they let on. I'm not too surprisedsince something always seems to go wrong when it comes time to makecopies. I gave the shop a week to print up some swatches of the artworkso that I could verify that all was well but after trying a few things outthey were unable to produce anything that they wanted to show me.Maybe they were incompetent or maybe they were spiritually opposedto printing up a satanic-looking CD. I don't really know. All I knowis that after a few more days of getting nothing back from them Ihad to find another place to do the replication. So two weeks simplydisappeared in a puff of smoke. As it turned out things worked out for the better. I made afew slight but beneficial changes to the artwork before taking it in toa much more competent outfit. Everything went like clockwork atthe new place and it looked like they would even be able to squeezemy order in so that it would be done before I went on vacation. Thatwould have been great since it would have allowed me to hand delivera number of CDs to family and friends. But after taking one last listento the music through my three-way speakers I heard something in themix that bothered me a little too much. I tried to resist the urge tomake any more changes so late in the cycle, but I was overcome andI just had to fix it. So I had them pull the CD out of the replicationqueue, which they were able to do just in time, but that caused me tomiss my deadline. I don't regret it though, ending up a few days lateis better than delivering a flawed product, especially a pressed CDwhich is going to last a long time. Enjoy this one, it's a keeper.

The Fireaxe theory - Outline

I. Basics - well established theories

1. Emergent systems - that complex systems can arise from theinteractions of simple things2. Natural selection - that organisms mutate, proliferate, and compete,with the "losers" becoming extinct3. Behavioral science - that neurological systems, at their core, functionaccording to the rules of conditioning4. Entropy - that within a closed system, entropy always increases,which limits the amount of transformation that can occur

II. Extensions

1. That consciousness is an emergent system: a complex system arisingin the human mind from the interaction of simple neurons.2. That civilizations are emergent systems arising from the physicalinteractions of humans whether conscious or not.3. That ideologies are emergent systems arising from the psychologicalinteractions of conscious humans4. That emergent systems follow the laws of natural selection in muchthe same way that organisms do5. That the universe is, by definition, a closed system

III. Contentions regarding consciousness

1. That consciousness is a survival advantage2. That being a member of an ideology is a survival advantage3. That making its members conscious is a necessary part of anideology's survival4. That consciousness is created by instilling within a person apermanent sense of inadequacy - in essence a state of constant fear5. That the deeper the sense of inadequacy, the stronger the personis motivated - generally to serve their ideology

IV. Contentions regarding ideological struggle

1. That ideologies fight for survival using many methods including,but not limited to, war and enslavement2. That aggression is a survival advantage3. That aggressive ideologies make members of rival ideologiesfeel afraid and inadequate which in response become more aggressive,thus creating a vicious circle4. That aggressive ideologies must continue to grow or face internalstrife as their aggressive members will feed on each other to satisfytheir needs5. That internal struggle results in ideological mutation

V. Contentions regarding the future

1. That internal strife is inevitable since the laws of entropy implythat continuous growth is not sustainable2. That the abstract bases for ideologies transcend mortality and thussuicidal aggression is not restrained by fear of death3. That ideological mutation will eventually result in the creation ofa suicidal ideology which will attempt to save the human race bydestroying it

How to order Fireaxe CDs:

Ordering Fireaxe CD's is an informal process as I am sellingthem personally out of my apartment. Simply mail me a letter whichcontains the following:

1. The names of the CDs that you want to buy.2. The address where you want the CDs sent.3. Cash, a check, or a money order for the total cost.

Or if you want to do PayPal, just send me the answers to1 and 2 above in an e-mail and I'll tell you where to send the money. Here is a price list. The first number is the cost for U.S.based customers, the second is for outside the U.S. The pricesinclude shipping and handling.

Eternal Devotion $6 $8 to the Dark GoddessFood for the Gods: $12 $14 - 1 copy leftVictory or Death $5 $7Lovecraftian Nightmares $5 $7 - Sold outA Dream of Death $3 $5 - Sold out

Send everything to:

Brian Voth 1301 Medical Center Dr. #415 Chula Vista, CA 91911 USA

If you review CDs on a website or in a magazine, any oneof the single CDs (Not "Food for the Gods") is free of charge inexchange for the review. In this case all I need is a request bye-mail. Please send me the URL of your review site or copy of yourmagazine with the review in it when it is done. If you want toexchange CDs, tapes, or stuff of equivalent value, make theserequests via e-mail and we'll arrange a trade. The CDs come with a booklet filled with awesome art, aletter about the project, and some information about the CD whichcan also be found on the Fireaxe site. Lastly, if you want to print and distribute Fireaxe CDs Ican send you an additional CD which contains tiff files for all thebooklets, tray cards, and labels for each project. The tiff disk is freeso just say the word.

The Future

In 2008, Fireaxe will take a step back and work on a couple ofprojects from the past. First of all, "Food for the Gods" has sold outand will be re-mastered before a second printing run is made. Also, itmay also be re-mixed for even better sound quality depending on timeconstraints. Secondly, the first Fireaxe CD, "A Dream of Death" willbe getting a complete overhaul before it is re-released. Everything willbe re-recorded using much more modern equipment and with everythingthat I've learned over the last ten years going into it to make it better thanever. Also, since it was recorded at a time when CDs had a 74 minutelimit instead of the current 80, I will add six more minutes of music tothe work in which I will explore a number of musical themes and makethe CD that much better. So it looks like a year of sequels for Fireaxe.I'll probably leave the names the same but I've been kicking around a fewnew ideas for the CDs, such as "Food for the Gods - Regurgitated", "Desertfor the Gods", and "A Dream of Undeath", "The Morning After Death", or"I'm Dreaming of a White Strait-Jacket - a Fireaxe Christmas in Hell". My goal is to deliver music to whoever wants to hear it inwhatever way is necessary. Whatever the market demands, I will supply,but I do want to avoid the mass marketing channel. Exposure is fine, butin the modern business, the substance of the music must be altered tomatch the demands of the marketplace. This would totally defeat thepurpose of why I write music in the first place. I write music because itis a way to express my emotions. What I both think and feel goes intothe songs. That is the power, Fireaxe is the channel, and any diversiondiminishes the emotive effect. Thus I try to avoid such diversions.That is how art should be.

Rights to duplicate Fireaxe materials

Currently Fireaxe is not for profit. I sell the single CDs for$5 or $6, $12 for "Food for the Gods" since it is three CDs, which coversthe production and mailing costs. For CDs sent out of the country,I'll have to charge an extra $2 per disk to cover the additional mailingcost. If you write reviews or put samples on your website I'll give you aCD for free. Since I am not making any money with the currentrecordings, you are free to make duplicates of them to distribute aslong as you obey the following guidelines:

1. You can only sell the duplications for the price of the medium or less, plus any delivery cost. You are not allowed to make any profit with the music.2. You should tell me how many copies you gave out and who got them so I can keep track. Also, if they have an e-mail address I'd like that as well so I can add them to the mailing list.3. You are likewise free to adorn any webpages or duplications with the gifs and jpgs on my website as long as you include an obvious link back to my website. This includes putting Fireaxe song samples on your site as well.4. You are free to play any Fireaxe songs (in unaltered form) provided you are an unsigned band without a marketing tie-in. You are not allowed to record those songs onto anything that you will sell.5. Do not fall in love with the Dark Goddess. I mean, seriously. She's the goddess of death after all. It's not a good idea. Furthermore, do not have sexual fantasies involving the Dark Goddess. She does not have a womb and thus lacks the entrance to that particular organ. Also, attempting to use other entrances will likely result in castration. Again, it's not a good idea.6. You are vehemently discouraged from doing anything depicted in the CD "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess" such as: torturing someone, lying for corporate profit, rationalizing greed, beating, raping, and murdering your girlfriend, destroying the lives of those who wronged you and their families, corrupting the government, trying to kill yourself with pleasure, kidnapping and ransoming people, committing atrocities, cutting someone's face to pieces, destroying half the world as revenge, and especially stating that any of these things are okay because "God is on your side." Please, think before you act.7. You are food for the gods.8. You are required to crank the song "Hounds of Tindalos" as loud as you can as often as you can. It’s your only defense against THEM. Be warned, they come through angles. Note that the CD is round. Are your speaker cabinets square?9. Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, Hastur the Unspeakable, and all other mythos creatures are purely the inventions of Lovecraft and other fiction authors. None of it is real, at least that’s what I’m going to say in court if you try to sue me for destruction of your property, house, city, or soul as a result of listening to the “Lovecraftian Nightmares” CD too much.10. You are free to play "The Rack" in school or church or any other institution bent on crushing your will and turning you into a mindless zombie slave of the corporate dominated world. Try not to develop a bad attitude about it.11. You are not free to commit suicide while listening to any Fireaxe song. I'm sorry, I'll have to prosecute. On a serious note, if you are thinking about doing it, please e-mail or call me if you have no one else to talk to. When I was in my teens the album "The Wall" by Pink Floyd used to really get to me. Just hearing songs like "Comfortably Numb", and "Hey You" would get me pretty depressed and mildly suicidal. I'm just trying to say that I've been there. If my music is having that effect on you, please get in touch. You aren't alone.

The gist of it is that you can do just about anything with themusic as long as you don't profit from it and that I get some sort ofcredit for having written it. I'm open to any methods of distributingmy music, such as compilation tapes or CDs, radio play, or recordinglabel distribution. However, you will need my direct permission todo so or some kind of legal agreement.

Ending Comments

Any comments or questions are welcome. If anyone has anyupdates on their projects, I'd like to hear from you. I know thereare a few people out there working on some cool things that I haven'theard from in a while. Drop me an e-mail regarding how you'regetting along.

"In the past, financial collapses have played out over months, not days, and generally take more than a year to hit rock bottom. These descents are neither constant nor gradual and over the period of the collapse a number of false bottoms are reached where the markets turn upwards and everything seems to be over. But after each rebound comes another, deeper drop, followed by another rebound and another drop. Over and over the process repeats, punishing anyone who dares to invest in what seem to be bargain basement deals, until finally equilibrium is established once more. If the collapse has truly begun, then the world will be a very different place a year from now. Very different indeed." - The Burning Blade 10.6

Twelve months ago the consensus was that the sub-primeproblem was contained. Six months ago the consensus was that whilethe problem had grown that it was now contained and that a recessionwould be avoided. Today the fifth largest bank in the United Statesstands in ruin, a recession, if not a depression, is staring us in the face,and the global markets are thrashing around like epileptics on methdespite the best efforts of those in charge to bring stability to the globalfinancial system. But once again the markets are responding to the latestshock treatments by the Federal Reserve and many are saying that theproblems have finally been solved and that the crisis is over. Praise toIshtar! Well, we've all heard that song and seen that dance before andsome of us never bought into it in the first place. And when the Fed isusing methods that it hadn't needed to use since the Great Depression itis definitely time to set aside one's faith in the powers that be. But itmust be nice to be a true believer and never have to face a painful truthor admit that you were wrong. Willful ignorance is bliss. It is comical, although in the dark sense, to watch theworld's foremost financial experts attempt to solve the problem ofa deflating credit bubble by adding yet more credit to the system, butthat is exactly what they are doing. In this sense they are making thesame mistakes as so many believers down through the centuries havemade before them who never stopped to consider the idea that thetruths that they held most dear were based on false assumptions. Yes,the madness all starts innocently enough, with a problem that issuccessfully solved by the gentle application of force, or some othertaboo method which raises moral and ethical questions. But withsuccess that method becomes less taboo and more acceptable andmore likely to be used again when similar problems arise, which theyinevitably do. Then comes the transition period, when the questionablemethod is used more frequently to snuff out problems that now occurincreasingly more often and are more severe when they appear.Taboos are brushed aside and more force must be used each time inorder to make the newer, bigger problems go away. Objections areoften raised, but the success of the method is unquestionable and itsuse becomes not only policy, but is embraced as dogma by the ideologywhich wields it. At that point, the end result becomes inevitable. Allproblems are addressed using the application of that highly successfulbut ethically questionable method which eventually gets used with suchforcefulness and frequency that it becomes a moral hazard unto itselfand winds up creating more problems than it solves. However, the truebelievers, who've been conditioned to think that their methodology isinfallible by years if not decades of success, will continue to poundaway at every problem that arises with it regardless of the damage thatthey cause in the process and in spite of the fact that their method nolonger produces the desired results. Welcome to the worst case scenario. Whether it be a manbeating his wife, a state torturing people for information, an addictseeking another fix to calm the shakes, a politician telling another lieto win another vote, or a central banker extending another vast loanto prop up a corrupt system, the repeated use of such measures alwaysends in escalation and tragedy. Of course, we've all heard manystories of this nature and we all know that buying into bubbles andabusing one's power is wrong and self-destructive, but no matterhow much we swear to never allow ourselves to be as stupid asour predecessors we make similar mistakes and suffer similarcatastrophes. The reason that we do these things is that the immediategains of doing something immoral outweigh the long term risks ofrepeatedly doing that thing, at least for awhile, thus allowing us tobelieve that we can quit at any time and permitting the conditioningeffect of getting rewarded for doing something self-destructive to growand strengthen. Eventually this conditioning will grow strong enoughto overcome the most disciplined minds and the path to disaster is alldownhill from there. So in the end we will have a dead wife, a policestate, a homeless junkie selling their body for drugs, a corrupt politician,and Ben Bernanke, a man who refuses to administer the necessary butpainful economic medicine to reform a broken system and choosesinstead to administer morphine until the patient dies. Anotherpredictable tragedy unfolds. Of course, an even worse scenario is that somehow thecentral bankers of the world manage to save the current monetaryregime, as dysfunctional and corrupt as it is, and keep it alive fora few more years or longer. The system is increasingly benefitingthe few over the many and preventing the judicious use of existingresources in favor of overconsumption and wasteful excess, not tomention the utter destruction of any sense of morality and ethics inthe financial realm and beyond. I would not want to see the currentsystem continue as too many are suffering enough as it is. To behonest, I wished that the correction could have begun ten years ago,but it wasn't allowed to happen then or any time since and now thecollapse will regrettably be much, much worse. So please misterBernanke, stop feeding our bodies into the voracious god of neo-liberalist capitalism. Let it die, and let us all come together to buryit and rebuild upon a solid foundation. Speaking of "Food for the Gods", the three-CD work isundergoing an overhaul in the Fireaxe studio. Not only will all thetracks be remixed with an ear to make the sound more balancedlike "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess", but the vocals arebeing re-recorded as well. So far the change is like night and dayand songs like "My Name is Joshua" and "Chariot" sound as fierceand strong as they were meant to be. And oh, wait until you hear"Malediction", it will have you praying at the feet of the dark goddessherself. Well, actually I don't want you to start worshipping her orany other god or goddess for that matter. Please see past the hyperboleto the intended message: the new "Food" will rock harder than ever. A big ‘Hello’ to anyone receiving the Burning Blade for thefirst time. This is the Fireaxe newsletter.

The Meaning of the Songs - Masters of the Universe

Before I get into the descriptions of the individual tracks I'dlike to take a moment to talk about the CD in general and some of theearly feedback. Overall the responses are very favorable with theconsensus being that while it is another great Fireaxe epic it is notquite as good as "Food for the Gods". I can understand that for themost part seeing as how it is impossible for a single CD to measureup to the epic nature of a concept work nearly three times as long.However, I do think that "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess" isbetter than any single CD from the previous work considered by itself,so please don't be disappointed. My intention was to create an eightyminute story, similar to the fourteen epics on "Food for the Gods",and specifically one that contained a more in depth look at the modernworld than I was able to portray in "Waiting for Tomorrow". So, inessence, the new CD is more like a part of the larger themes exploredin "Food for the Gods" and so it naturally can't be as epic, but I feelthat it is certainly more refined, profound, and well produced thanany previous Fireaxe work. Also, there is a difference in the feel of the two projects. In"Food for the Gods" there were a lot of aggressive "testosterone driven"style tracks, like "Chariot", "My Name is Joshua", "Where Eagles Fly",etc., where the protagonist is a highly motivated and ruthlessconquering hero. In contrast, on the new CD only "Masters of theUniverse" contains that style of music, although "Viva la Revolucion"is close to imitating that form. Instead, the new CD is more subtlewith the protagonist doing much more suffering and much lesswinning than the protagonists in the previous work. While that maybe a let down, it is by design. "Eternal" was intended to be a longdescent into a personal hell that ends in a type of triumph that onlya nihilist could love. But the protagonist doesn't have a "Sum ofAll Fears" or "Cut or be Cut" moment at the end of the new CDwhich is what some of you might have been expecting. However, Iintentionally avoided putting such a moment in the CD because thatwas not the direction that I wanted to go. In "Eternal" the protagonisthas been denied triumph and glory all his life. His victories as anexecutive are tainted and incomplete, the woman he loved was defiledbefore he could win her hand, and his "revolucion" was merely acynical ploy to help him exact his revenge. There is no big bang atthe end, just a number of defiant verses and an initially confusingfinal passage. When the last track draws to a close you might findyourself asking "what just happened?" but upon closer examination,and I'd like everyone to examine Fireaxe music closely, you will seethat his plan was a carefully orchestrated ruse intended to draw theantagonist into making a terrible blunder using the principles discussedin the previous tracks. I'll go into further detail in later editions of theBurning Blade, but I did want to point out the reasons why the CD ishow it is for those of you who have already had a chance to listen to it.Anyway, on with the song descriptions. The second and third tracks of "Eternal Devotion to the DarkGoddess" are what I like to call my one-two punch, where I lay siege tothe ideologies of our modern world on both the left and the right. Asmuch as the CD, and all Fireaxe in general, may sound like a typicalantiwar leftist screed, the more that you look into it the more that you'llsee it is a balanced attack along a number of different fronts. Ideologyin general, or at least the inevitably corrupted versions of them, was, is,and always will be the primary target of Fireaxe both in music and inwriting. The new CD is no different, and this theme is clear in thesecond and third tracks. "Masters of the Universe" is a scathing attack on cutthroatcapitalism with numerous and often vulgar references to variousdeceptive, unethical, and brutal business practices which have onceagain risen to prominence in the modern corporate culture. Thearrogance of the protagonist saturates the song as well as his extremeaggression in the pursuit of profit. I've got a lot of favorite lines inthis song but perhaps the one I like best is the spoken part where hesays, "R.O.I. Look it up." For those of you not economically literate,the abbreviation stands for Return On Investment, which is anotherway of saying "profit". It's simply the amount of money that is returnedto you when you invest in a particular project, asset, or company. Ilike the line because it captures the protagonist's attitude so well, asif he is saying, "If you don't understand what I'm talking about thenyou're an idiot and you deserve to be poor". That attitude personifies the modern right wing, althoughthere is little which resembles true conservatism in today's versionof economics. The protagonist's harsh attitudes towards bleedingheart liberals, the poor, and the working class are shared by many"conservatives" and find sympathy in the halls of right leaninginstitutions. And although he does attack organized religion it'sonly to point out that it's all a big scam, just like the ones that he runswith his business. The critique here is that organized religion isn'tabout morality, it's really all about power. And while there are a fewstabs at leftist ideas here and there, the song mainly assaults the rightby showing the extreme side of that perspective and how corruptionhas turned it into a voracious monster. Another aspect of the song that I like is the similaritybetween the world of cutthroat capitalism and the domain of streetgangs. This track compares well with the typical egotistical machismoand disrespect for others that can be found in a large number of "ganstarap" songs. From the rhyming to the profanity to the rapid-fire lyricsthe rap and metal genres merge in what I believe is a completelyunique way. Although the musical style is all metal, the influenceof the rap culture and its reflection in the modern business culturecome together to reveal that high brow and low brow are not necessarilytwo completely different things. Both the street thug and the youngexecutive can embrace similar strategies and attitudes towards rivalsand have the same success in their rise to the top. Add to that thefact that both corporations and gangs are highly motivated to sellproduct and eliminate competitors and one can see that the "law of thejungle" applies similarly to both cultures. The closer that you look,the less of a stretch comparisons between the two become. Now, the depiction of corporations in the song is extremeand I do not believe that it is typical of what goes on in the averagecompany, large or small. Likewise, "gangsta rap" music isn't anaccurate portrayal of a typical day in the inner city, but both do agood job of capturing the part of both cultures that is pulling themin a sociopathic direction. There have been many times throughouthistory where the cultures of the boardroom and the mean streetshave turned from civil to brutal and back again and these days itappears that egotism, greed, and a win-at-all-costs attitude haspervaded too much of our society. But beyond just pointing a finger atall that is wrong with cutthroat capitalism, "Masters of the Universe"delves deeper, unearthing the driving forces behind the madness. Thesong reveals how the protagonist began humbly, trying to play by therules in a culture where backstabbing, cronyism, and deal-makingare the preferred methods of advancement. It doesn't take him verylong to realize that he is going nowhere and so he puts his drive tosucceed ahead of his personal ethics and grabs for the brass ring.Who can blame him though? If breaking the rules and chucking one'smorality have no consequences then aren't the rules really that thereare no rules? The protagonist is merely adapting to his environment. In the middle of the song there is a slow part which digsfurther into the issue of how the protagonist got to be where he is. Hissuccess bore great fruit, even though it came at a price, but we findout that it is not his personal ambition that drives him as much as it ishis desire to be a success in the eyes of his parents. His inner conflictrages as he sees how happy he has made his mother and father, hidingthe fact that he had to use methods that they would not approve of toattain his position. But were their expectations reasonable given theends that he had to go to in order to achieve them? The great moralquestions of our age abound here, especially when the protagonistutters the following lines:

"This is what you wanted.This is what we dream of.This is what we worship.This is what brings us closer to God."

Capitalism has become the dominant ideology in the westand indeed the entire world, replacing democracy which had made allreligions subservient to it. Capitalism is more than a monetary systemthough, it has become a system which assigns value to things beyondthat which are considered commodities and services. At this point inhistory it should be obvious to even the most pro-growth proponentthat the excessive and growing consumption by the vast majority ofthe world's inhabitants is evidence that the many values systems ofa variety of cultures, traditions, and religions have been supplantedby what can be measured in monetary terms. Success is defined byterms like "bigger", "better", and "more" rather than by more aestheticqualities. This is not to say that we are focused entirely on getting rich,but rather that wealth is the measure by which we evaluate too much ofour world. If someone is rich we assume that they did something rightto become that way, and if they are poor we assume that they mademistakes or did something wrong and deserve their status. Thus,wealth becomes a measure of morality as well as success. Also, wejudge ideas, talent, skill, and a great number of things by how easilythose things are translated into wealth. The mark of a good idea or agood performance is revealed by how many people are willing to payfor it since money has become the measure of quality. One dollarequals one vote in the "democracy" of capitalism. Think about how you see the world. If someone says that theyhave a good idea, is your first thought that they should try to marketit or that the proof that it is a good idea is how well it sells? Such astandard makes Fireaxe an utter failure. When someone says that theygraduated from a prestigious university do you assume that they will beable to land a well paying job or think that something is wrong with themif they do not? Do you see your job more as a way to make money thanas a way to do your part in our society? And if you became rich, wouldyou quit working? Most people would argue that while they do enjoymaterial things that their values system is separate from economics, butafter the grotesque spending and consumption spree that I've witnessedover the last decade or more all that I can say to that is that most peopleare completely full of shit. If our values were strong we would laugh atadvertising rather than embrace its irrational context. No, instead wehave been sold a make-believe world of achievement, enjoyment, andself worth defined in monetary terms that is every bit as virulent andabsurd as any dogma put forth by any of the world's religions. Ourideology has become capitalism, or perhaps more accurately,Consumptionism, which is a heresy of overindulgence that lacks thediscipline of the notion that debts must be repaid and the tenet that astable and well regulated money supply is essential to social well being.Thus, when the protagonist in the song declares that becoming rich"is what brings us closer to God" he is referring to the worship of anew religion called Consumptionism. There is one more bullet left in "Masters of the Universe"and that occurs in the very next verse. Before we hypocrites do ourcustomary "tsk tsk" dismissal of the protagonist's perverted valuessystem, which of course we do not share, the protagonist reveals twovery inconvenient facts about why we accept things the way that theyare. The first is that most of us have few issues with someone doingimmoral things so long as they are serving our interests, especiallywhen it is our leaders doing those immoral things. Instead we makeexcuses for them and don't try to reign them in like we do others whobreak our code of ethics. This type of moral relativism is practiced bymany and especially by those who claim to have strong morals. Thesecond inconvenient fact is that even if we don't suffer from moralrelativism, we must still align ourselves with someone whom we maynot approve of so that we do not suffer under the rule of an even moremalevolent leader. This is not to say that all leaders are despicabletyrants, but in the absence of an ethical standard which keeps theruthless out of power there inevitably manifests a "race to the bottom"where sins committed by one ruler effectively permit other rulers theleeway to do the same. And so, down, down, down we go. Now, about the music on the track. "Masters of the Universe"was the most troublesome song that I've ever written as far as gettingit to sound and feel the way that I wanted it to. Over the course of thewriting and recording of the CD I changed the tempo of the song atleast twice, reworked the drumming several times, altered the guitarparts more times than I care to remember, and recorded the vocals ina number of different styles before finding something that I liked.For some frustrating reason the song just kept coming up flat. I'drecord it one way and then on subsequent listens it would soundlifeless. So I would make some changes and think that I had itrocking and then discover later that it still hadn't gelled right. Icould have given up and stayed satisfied with what I had at any time,but my perfectionism took over and the end result is what you arehearing on the CD, which is pretty much exactly the feel and flowthat I wanted when the lyrics were first written. The end result is fantastic. The music is aggressive andrelentless, matching the protagonist's approach to business. Thethrashy guitar work and syncopating rhythms scream "Fireaxe" atthe top of their lungs and I am glad that this song is well liked bymany a faithful listener. I now know for a fact that all my workputting this song together was worth it. I love just about everythingabout it, including the style, which is reminiscent of the formulathat worked so well for metal bands of the eighties. Yes, the solo,the breakdown into the slow part, and the ABACAB format aren'texactly breaking new ground, but given the unique directions takenin the rest of the CD it's not a bad thing to have a well placedthrowback to the era of foot-stomping, head-banging metal as partof "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess". Regarding the lyrics, Octavio Ramos and I teamed up toco-author this song and I feel that it contains some of his best andmost brutal analogies to date. What can I say about my friendOctavio? He was truly inspired when he wrote this song, and thevast majority of the lyrics came from his hand. Not unlike the waythat the music went, the lyrics also took several iterations beforethey reached a final form. Octavio would send me something andI'd slice it and dice it and send it back and then he'd work on it andsend me back something which was even better than before. Thefinal product is simply filthy. It's sharp, vicious, and oh so verycorporate. The age of modern capitalism is well represented by"Masters of the Universe". Which brings me to the final question to be answeredabout this track, what exactly is FUD anyway? In the song thereis a line about "gonna FUD you in the ass" and you might bewondering if that's a typo or that I meant to write another wordbeginning with 'f'. The answer is no, I meant to say FUD and itis very much a euphemism for the corporate version of sodomy.FUD is an abbreviation which stands for Fear, Uncertainty, andDoubt. It is a tactic that originated in the software industry a fewdecades ago and takes advantage of the fear, uncertainty and doubtin computer users about whether or not a new application, game,upgrade, or download will work with their system or potentiallyscrew things up beyond repair. A lot of people have a least onehorror story about how when they installed something on to theircomputer that something else stopped working or that their computerwould crash or lock up on them at inconvenient times and as aresult they did not want to re-experience the pain of reformattingtheir computer or paying the expense of having someone else fix itever again. Thus, people will tend to want to buy only reliablesoftware and equipment. This is where the FUD strategy comesin. If a large corporation, like say, Microsoft for instance, wantedto sell its applications over those of its competitors, it could do soby implying that installing non-Microsoft products on a Microsoftoperating system might result in compatibility issues and otherproblems, while using Microsoft products for everything ensuresthat everything will work perfectly. Then, out of fear of a computercrash, uncertainty that third party software would install correctly, anddoubt that tech support would be able to help them fix any problems,users would be more prone to choose Microsoft. Voila! FUD! Ofcourse, in reality Microsoft went much farther than simply implyingthat there might be problems when using third party software. Infact they were caught altering the way that their operating systemsupported certain applications so that their competitors' productswould not work correctly while Microsoft products would. Thisstrategy was named "embrace, extend, and extinguish" and inessence allowed Microsoft to wield its position of having amonopoly on operating systems as a weapon against those whotried to write software that competed with their products. In any event, that is just a taste of the some of the unsavorytactics practiced at some of the largest corporations in the world.Investigate others at your own risk as you might lose faith in thesystem and in humanity in general as a result.

And with those words the most intense Fireaxe song of theCD, and perhaps of all time, was launched. One listener commentedthat I wasn't able to keep up the intensity after the third track and Ihave to begrudgingly agree with that, I mean, how can I follow "MyAngel" with anything that sounds nearly as powerful? This is not tosay that the second half of the CD is weak by any measure. In fact,there were times during the recording where I thought that the firsthalf was weak in comparison to the second and figured that I neededto work more on the first four tracks to balance it out. In any event,if this track moves you more than any other you are not alone. To me, "My Angel" is one of the many "stories which must betold" which aren't being told for one reason or another. "Black Knight"is another one of those stories as well as the entirety of "A Dream ofDeath". I say this because these stories tell of life from a perspectivethat doesn't get a lot of attention, mainly because the main charactersare nerdy outcasts like yours truly, and also because they end in tragedy,not in triumph. Not surprisingly, the "nerd tragedy" genre is not aliveand well, except on Fireaxe CDs and perhaps between the lines ofmany a Dilbert cartoon. Still, there is an audience for it, howeversmall, so I will continue to serve it. I remember once reading a story written by a young man whosegirlfriend was raped. I can't remember whether he had tried to defendher and was beaten up or whether he was simply not there when ithappened, but I do remember him write that his girlfriend was never thesame afterwards. She was traumatized, distant, frightened of intimacy,and her relationship with the author slowly disintegrated despite theauthor's devotion and willingness to accept her. In his writing I couldfeel his sense of anguish, despair, anger, guilt, and most of all a senseof powerlessness that struck a chord with me. He described how hehad a strong urge to buy a gun and kill his girlfriend's rapist after theman was released from prison but didn't go through with it because hedidn't want to throw his life away for nothing. After all, revenge wasn'tgoing return his beloved girlfriend to being the way that she was before.In the end he was broken, she was broken, and lives were pointlesslydestroyed. His was the kind of story that I wanted to tell with musicand with the types and intensities of emotions that I wanted mylisteners to feel. And so I wrote "My Angel". The song is not autobiographical in any sense except that Idelved into my own emotions to give the song its character. The ladiesof the world have decided that they do not like me and so I've neveractually gotten a romantic type relationship to the point where it couldbe destroyed as painfully as the one in the song, but I have had a numberof friends relate similar experiences to that of the protagonist to me andso this song is dedicated to all those who've suffered through this sortof powerless, frustrating agony. The protagonist in "My Angel" seems very different than theone in "Masters of the Universe". Where he is strong, aggressive, andrelentless in the previous track, he is soft, caring, and unsure of himselfin this one. However, the key lies in the opening spoken verse where heexpresses his desire to keep his heart pure. The protagonist knows thathe has cast aside his ethics and honor to become rich and powerful inthe business world, but he doesn't want the entire world to be that wayfor him. Sure, he could go after women like he goes after profit, andwould easily be able to seduce as many as he wanted given his position,but what he desires is to have some place in the world that's free of the"lust and envy" and immorality that have polluted the rest of his life.He wants to have something that's "pure and undespoiled", a part of hisheart to share with another whom he can shelter from the ravages ofa world of animalistic drives. This idealism is very much right wing inas much as it champions a traditional view of sex roles and the datingritual. He places his angel on a pedestal and woos her with charm,romance, and an offer that few women could refuse. To be quite honest,the first part of the song is so sweet and innocent that it sounds almostbizarre when viewed from the perspective of our modern sex-obsessedculture. That was by design, contrasting the sexual mores of an agelong gone, if it ever truly existed, with that of the post-feminist realityof today. Indeed, the ideology of the left wing, with its insistence ondestroying traditional sex roles, enforcement of equality, and endlessmockery of modesty and chastity has created an environment whereinstant gratification and serial monogamy are the norm and where theidea of building a solid relationship that can endure hardships ispointless, dull, and doomed to failure. It is this facet of left wingideology that comes under fire in "My Angel", one which is essentiallyConsumptionism applied to sex and relationships, and which is vulgar,animalistic, and devoid of meaning. In the first part of the song the protagonist overcomes hisfears and reluctance and approaches the woman he desires. He is thenrewarded for his sincere and romantic efforts with a pair of promisesthat she makes to him, revealing that their relationship is probablyjust one question away from marriage. Perhaps the protagonist intendedto ask that question at the celebration that he takes her to in the secondpart of the song, but we will never know for after the protagonist leaveshis angel for "just a moment" she is swept up into the arms of a handsome,smooth-talking liar who seduces her. The protagonist is overcome with adesire to step in between them and assault his rival, but the thing whichholds him back is the look in his angel's eyes when she stares into thoseof the intruder. Indeed, she is swooning, enraptured by the liar's spell,and she surrenders to him body and soul as we find out later. And so,realizing that he does not measure up to his rival's charisma and charm,the protagonist simply swallows his anger, as he has done so many timesbefore, and walks away. Inside he is seething, and in an extremely intensesection of the song we hear his anger turn inwards and become self hatredand finally depression. Now, I realize this part of the song is loaded with profanity, butin light of the context I felt that it would be disingenuous not to use suchlanguage. How many of us have been in that position before? Were ourthoughts clean or were they profane like the ones expressed by theprotagonist? In any event, I didn't try to hide the vulgarity of the sceneor the profane words or the graphic nature of what happened and insteadput it all out on display. This is the hideous face of reality. Look at it.See it. Understand it. The third part of the song begins slowly. Things seem likethey might finally be over but the emotional turmoil has only justbegun. The protagonist's "angel" visits him after getting dumped bythe smooth-talking liar and she confesses her sins, all of them, and inpainful detail. Meanwhile the protagonist just sits there, holding hisangel, trying to make her feel better, but all the while the anger insidehim is growing. He hates the liar for what he has done to his angel andregrets not doing anything to stop him, but when he realizes that hisangel hasn't truly come back to him and in fact still loves the man whotreated her so badly his anger breaks free of its chains and he starts tolose control of himself. It is here where his emotional churning beginsin earnest. The protagonist is tormented by the thoughts of what couldhave been but was destroyed by his angel's flight of fancy. He screamsat his angel, calling her hateful names, and barely stops short of hurtingher physically before somehow managing to calm himself. Then, onceagain he tries to swallow his anger and just accept things the way thatthey are rather than the way he wanted them to be. He almost managesto do so but his heart just won't allow it. No, he has been hurt too deeplyand the realization that not only can he no longer feel love for his angel,but that he will never be able to love anyone else so passionately again,pushes him over the edge. The protagonist can no longer control himselfand his full fury is unleashed upon the woman he once loved with all ofhis heart. Here I spare most of the details of what he does to her in thefinal part of the song, alluding to his actions without describing them,and instead I focus on the very dark emotions that the protagonist feelsas he stares down at the lifeless body that used to make him feel sowonderful. In the end he sees her "for what she was…just anotherpromise…betrayed." This, in a nutshell, is the story of the protagonist'slife. The dreams he chased and the promises that they held all end inmisery and betrayal. One possible perspective on the song "My Angel" is to saythat the protagonist got what he deserved. After all of the lying andcheating and treachery that he used to gain power and riches in theprevious song he loses what he held most dear as the result of someoneelse using those very same tactics albeit in the art of seduction. Whilethat is true, that was not my primary intention for the song. Instead,I was trying to show how the innocent and idealistic facets of life aredestroyed by the corrupted versions of ideologies from both sides of thespectrum. In "Masters of the Universe", cutthroat capitalism destroysthe protagonist's sense of fair play and the value of his hard work. In"My Angel", promiscuity destroys the protagonist's innocence and hiscapacity to love. But what has been utterly destroyed though is the"American Dream". You know, the one where a man gets a good job,works hard, is successful, and marries a loving woman who raisestheir children in a comfortable home in the country with a whitepicket fence and a dog and so forth. That America is long gone,shoved aside by the new America divided by two radical ideologiesraging out of control with lust and greed. The music in the song had to match the emotional contentand thus it ranges everywhere from soaring and beautiful to hideousand intense. The latter I knew that I could do well, but the formerwas quite a challenge. At first I was very worried about putting fiveminutes of little more than vocals and keyboards into a Fireaxe song,especially with the "new age" sounding synthesizer parts and thenaïve nature of the lyrics. From a metal perspective this part of theCD is completely wussified. And while a minute or two of that kindof thing would probably be tolerable to most head-bangers I wasn'tsure if I should have trimmed it down or not. Yet the flow of the songdemanded the length of the part as well as its pure innocence and soit ended up mostly unchanged in its final form. Another concern thatI had was that there was no distortion to cover my voice and that withthe new microphone that I was using that everyone would hear all ofthe mistakes and inconsistencies in my singing. It felt like I wastaking a huge risk, but that's what I do when I record music, and so itwas full steam ahead. The good news is that I feel that I was able tonot only whip the part into passable form, but that it is has become oneof my favorite parts of the entire CD. It is hauntingly sweet, and whenlistened to with the knowledge that it will all end horribly it becomestragic as well. In the middle where I sing "My angel. My angel."it sounds so nice that I can't believe that it is me doing the singing.I've come a long way since the "Unholy Rapture" days, that's for sure.So all seemed well until my search for a female vocalist came upempty and I had to sing her part or figure out a way to leave it out.The former option was easier as cutting out her part was going to puta big hole in the song, but singing female vocals was a challenge thatwas almost monumental. This wasn't like the part in "Black Knight"where I could get away with whispering the parts of the "demongoddess" in a feminine voice. No, I had to pull out my best falsettoand try to sell the lines as if I were a love-struck young woman. Itried my best and I feel that it almost sneaks past the listener withoutraising a flag. Well darnit, it just isn't easy trying to make yourmusical vision into reality. When the song moves into the second part the musiccaptures the feel of ballroom dancing as it gently sways to a duetbetween a piano and bass guitar (a first for metal?). Then therhythm guitars come in and build the intensity to match the mood ofthe music. It builds and builds until finally reaching the crescendowhere the full power and intensity pound away with the same ferocityas the rage in the lyrics before giving way to a dark emotional mood.The transition through the second part is grand, capturing everythingwonderfully, or at least I think so. The third part of the song grinds away at your emotions,switching between soft, delicate parts, strong, forceful parts, andcrushing parts with pulsing intensity and screaming vocals. Backand forth the music goes, rising and falling with the turmoil of theprotagonist until it finally reaches the emotional climax of the song…

After which it descends into one of the most powerfulriffs on the CD topped with a piercing guitar solo and finishingwith a low end, flowing riff to carry an exhausted listener home.It is a special track in many ways. At the end of the "My Angel" you've listened to only aboutthirty-six minutes of Fireaxe but you might feel as though you'velistened to the entire CD. The first three songs are very taxing inan emotional and even physical way and I wouldn't be surprised ifyou might be worn out after hearing them. I don't blame you if youare because when I listened to the CD all the way through for thefirst time rather than just song by song. "My Angel" had the sameeffect on me and it kind of left me emotionally numb for a while,allowing the next few tracks to slip by without raising my interesttoo much. Did that mean that those songs weren't as intense as Ithought? Well, no. I knew for sure that some of my favorite partsof the CD were on the second half but they didn't sound so intenseon my first listen. What I realized was that I'd been emotionallydrained by the first three tracks and that I needed time to recover.So if you've been feeling the same way after listening to "EternalDevotion to the Dark Goddess" consider pausing the CD halfwaythrough as kind of an intermission to let your batteries recharge.There's a short break at the end of the fourth track "The Evil MenDo" which works well as a break between halves. Pause your CDplayer, take off your earphones, walk around, relax a bit, and thinkabout what you've just heard before diving back in again. Then you'llbe ready for the second half of this darkest of all Fireaxe CDs. That's all for this edition. More to come next time.

The Fireaxe theory - Outline

I. Basics - well established theories

1. Emergent systems - that complex systems can arise from theinteractions of simple things2. Natural selection - that organisms mutate, proliferate, and compete,with the "losers" becoming extinct3. Behavioral science - that neurological systems, at their core, functionaccording to the rules of conditioning4. Entropy - that within a closed system, entropy always increases,which limits the amount of transformation that can occur

II. Extensions

1. That consciousness is an emergent system: a complex system arisingin the human mind from the interaction of simple neurons.2. That civilizations are emergent systems arising from the physicalinteractions of humans whether conscious or not.3. That ideologies are emergent systems arising from the psychologicalinteractions of conscious humans4. That emergent systems follow the laws of natural selection in muchthe same way that organisms do5. That the universe is, by definition, a closed system

III. Contentions regarding consciousness

1. That consciousness is a survival advantage2. That being a member of an ideology is a survival advantage3. That making its members conscious is a necessary part of anideology's survival4. That consciousness is created by instilling within a person apermanent sense of inadequacy - in essence a state of constant fear5. That the deeper the sense of inadequacy, the stronger the personis motivated - generally to serve their ideology

IV. Contentions regarding ideological struggle

1. That ideologies fight for survival using many methods including,but not limited to, war and enslavement2. That aggression is a survival advantage3. That aggressive ideologies make members of rival ideologiesfeel afraid and inadequate which in response become more aggressive,thus creating a vicious circle4. That aggressive ideologies must continue to grow or face internalstrife as their aggressive members will feed on each other to satisfytheir needs5. That internal struggle results in ideological mutation

V. Contentions regarding the future

1. That internal strife is inevitable since the laws of entropy implythat continuous growth is not sustainable2. That the abstract bases for ideologies transcend mortality and thussuicidal aggression is not restrained by fear of death3. That ideological mutation will eventually result in the creation ofa suicidal ideology which will attempt to save the human race bydestroying it

How to order Fireaxe CDs:

Ordering Fireaxe CD's is an informal process as I am sellingthem personally out of my apartment. Simply mail me a letter whichcontains the following:

1. The names of the CDs that you want to buy.2. The address where you want the CDs sent.3. Cash, a check, or a money order for the total cost.

Or if you want to do PayPal, just send me the answers to1 and 2 above in an e-mail and I'll tell you where to send the money. Here is a price list. The first number is the cost for U.S.based customers, the second is for outside the U.S. The pricesinclude shipping and handling.

Eternal Devotion $6 $9 to the Dark GoddessFood for the Gods: $12 $15 - Sold outVictory or Death $5 $8Lovecraftian Nightmares $5 $8 - Sold outA Dream of Death $3 $6 - Sold out

Send everything to:

Brian Voth 1301 Medical Center Dr. #415 Chula Vista, CA 91911 USA

If you review CDs on a website or in a magazine, any oneof the single CDs (Not "Food for the Gods") is free of charge inexchange for the review. In this case all I need is a request bye-mail. Please send me the URL of your review site or copy of yourmagazine with the review in it when it is done. If you want toexchange CDs, tapes, or stuff of equivalent value, make theserequests via e-mail and we'll arrange a trade. The CDs come with a booklet filled with awesome art, aletter about the project, and some information about the CD whichcan also be found on the Fireaxe site. Lastly, if you want to print and distribute Fireaxe CDs Ican send you an additional CD which contains tiff files for all thebooklets, tray cards, and labels for each project. The tiff disk is freeso just say the word.

The Future

In 2008, Fireaxe will take a step back and work on a couple ofprojects from the past. First of all, "Food for the Gods" has sold outand will be re-mastered before a second printing run is made. Also, itmay also be re-mixed for even better sound quality depending on timeconstraints. Secondly, the first Fireaxe CD, "A Dream of Death" willbe getting a complete overhaul before it is re-released. Everything willbe re-recorded using much more modern equipment and with everythingthat I've learned over the last ten years going into it to make it better thanever. Also, since it was recorded at a time when CDs had a 74 minutelimit instead of the current 80, I will add six more minutes of musicto the work in which I will explore a number of musical themes and makethe CD that much better. So it looks like a year of sequels for Fireaxe.I'll probably leave the names the same but I've been kicking around a fewnew ideas for the CDs, such as "Food for the Gods - Regurgitated", "Desertfor the Gods", and "A Dream of Undeath", "The Morning After Death", or"I'm Dreaming of a White Strait-Jacket - a Fireaxe Christmas in Hell". My goal is to deliver music to whoever wants to hear it inwhatever way is necessary. Whatever the market demands, I will supply,but I do want to avoid the mass marketing channel. Exposure is fine, butin the modern business, the substance of the music must be altered tomatch the demands of the marketplace. This would totally defeat thepurpose of why I write music in the first place. I write music because itis a way to express my emotions. What I both think and feel goes intothe songs. That is the power, Fireaxe is the channel, and any diversiondiminishes the emotive effect. Thus I try to avoid such diversions.That is how art should be.

Rights to duplicate Fireaxe materials

Currently Fireaxe is not for profit. I sell the single CDs for$5 or $6, $12 for "Food for the Gods" since it is three CDs, which coversthe production and mailing costs. For CDs sent out of the country,I'll have to charge an extra $2 per disk to cover the additional mailingcost. If you write reviews or put samples on your website I'll give you aCD for free. Since I am not making any money with the currentrecordings, you are free to make duplicates of them to distribute aslong as you obey the following guidelines:

1. You can only sell the duplications for the price of the medium or less, plus any delivery cost. You are not allowed to make any profit with the music.2. You should tell me how many copies you gave out and who got them so I can keep track. Also, if they have an e-mail address I'd like that as well so I can add them to the mailing list.3. You are likewise free to adorn any webpages or duplications with the gifs and jpgs on my website as long as you include an obvious link back to my website. This includes putting Fireaxe song samples on your site as well.4. You are free to play any Fireaxe songs (in unaltered form) provided you are an unsigned band without a marketing tie-in. You are not allowed to record those songs onto anything that you will sell.5. Do not fall in love with the Dark Goddess. I mean, seriously. She's the goddess of death after all, it's not a good idea. Furthermore, do not have sexual fantasies involving the Dark Goddess. She does not have a womb and thus lacks the entrance to that particular organ. Also, attempting to use other entrances will likely result in castration. Again, it's not a good idea.6. You are vehemently discouraged from doing anything depicted in the CD "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess" such as: torturing someone, lying for corporate profit, rationalizing greed, beating, raping, and murdering your girlfriend, destroying the lives of those who've wronged you and their families, corrupting the government, trying to kill yourself with pleasure, kidnapping and ransoming people, committing atrocities, cutting someone's face to pieces, destroying half the world as revenge, and especially stating that any of these things are okay because "God is on your side." Please, think before you act.7. You are food for the gods.8. You are required to crank the song "Hounds of Tindalos" as loud as you can as often as you can. It’s your only defense against THEM. Be warned, they come through angles. Note that the CD is round. Are your speaker cabinets square?9. Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, Hastur the Unspeakable, and all other mythos creatures are purely the inventions of Lovecraft and other fiction authors. None of it is real, at least that’s what I’m going to say in court if you try to sue me for destruction of your property, house, city, or soul as a result of listening to the “Lovecraftian Nightmares” CD too much.10. You are free to play "The Rack" in school or church or any other institution bent on crushing your will and turning you into a mindless zombie slave of the corporate dominated world. Try not to develop a bad attitude about it.11. You are not free to commit suicide while listening to any Fireaxe song. I'm sorry, I'll have to prosecute. On a serious note, if you are thinking about doing it, please e-mail or call me if you have no one else to talk to. When I was in my teens the album "The Wall" by Pink Floyd used to really get to me. Just hearing songs like "Comfortably Numb", and "Hey You" would get me pretty depressed and mildly suicidal. I'm just trying to say that I've been there. If my music is having that effect on you, please get in touch. You aren't alone.

The gist of it is that you can do just about anything with themusic as long as you don't profit from it and that I get some sort ofcredit for having written it. I'm open to any methods of distributingmy music, such as compilation tapes or CDs, radio play, or recordinglabel distribution. However, you will need my direct permission todo so or some kind of legal agreement.

Ending Comments

Any comments or questions are welcome. If anyone has anyupdates on their projects, I'd like to hear from you. I know thereare a few people out there working on some cool things that I haven'theard from in a while. Drop me an e-mail regarding how you'regetting along.

Welcome to the worst case scenario. Whether it be a manbeating his wife, a state torturing people for information, an addictseeking another fix to calm the shakes, a politician telling another lieto win another vote, or a central banker extending another vast loanto prop up a corrupt system, the repeated use of such measures alwaysends in escalation and tragedy.

Just in case anyone out there is reluctant to download this material due to an attack of conscience, Fireaxe fully supports the free distribution of any and all Fireaxe related content. In other words, feel free to upload and download mp3s, wavs, gifs, jpgs, newsletters, or anything else to do with Fireaxe on any server without worrying about any legal action. This also applies to burning and distributing CDs and DVDs which contain Fireaxe content. The only request that Fireaxe would like to make in this regard is that the distribution of the content be done without material compensation. Simply put, you can give it away to your heart's content, but you're not allowed to make money selling Fireaxe stuff. Please report all offenders to bev@neptune.net

That being said, if you order Fireaxe CDs from me, such as "Food for the Gods" you'll get 3 labeled CDs, a full-color booklet with lyrics, and a cool "chubby" jewel case to hold everything. It's a very good deal at $12 ($14 overseas), assuming, of course, that you still own something that plays CDs.